Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/651

 THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 627

part of them. But, with Vomu.= .s leave, this is a fpecies of intemperate ill-founded criticifm ; neither Kircher, nor Paez, nor whoever was author of that work, ever faid they in- nructed the emperor about the place in his dominions where the Nile arofe, as what he fays is only that the Agows or Geefh reported that the mountain trembled in dry weather, and had done fo that year, when the emperor, who was prefent, confirmed the Agow's report: this is not faying that Peter Paez told the emperor encamped with his army upon the fountains, that the Nile rofe in his dominions, and that this was the fource. Wo be to the works of Scaliger, Bo- chart, or Voffius, when they mail, in their turn, be fubmitted to fuch criticifm as this.

A Protestant million was the next, that I know of at leaft, which fucceeded that of the Portuguefe, and confided only of one traveller, Peter Heyling, of Lubec ; although he lived in the country, nay, governed it feveral years, he never attempted to vifit the fource of that river ; he had de- dicated himfelf to a ftudious and folitary life, having, a- mong other parts of his reading, a very competent know- ledge of Roman, or civil law ; he is laid to have given a great deal of his time to the compiling an inftitute of that law in the Abyffinian language for the ufe of that nation, upon a plan he had brought from Germany; but he did not Jive to finifh it, though that and two other books, written in Geez, flill exiit in private hands in Abyninia, at lead I have "been often confidently told fo.

The next and lad attempt I fliall take notice of, and one of the moft extraordinary that ever was made for the dif- covery of the Nile, was that of a German nobleman, Peter

4 K 2 Jofeph