Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/685

 THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 66t

grees of being vertical, it mud have been the very height of flood when the fun patted over that country in April ; whereas its increafe is not difcerned till about June, when the fun has left the zenith of all Abyflinia, having then patted over Nubia, and is Handing vertical to Syene, or as far to the northward as it can proceed.

It is not my meaning to maintain that there never was mow in Abyflinia, as climates have wonderfully changed. In Csfar's time, the greateft rivers in the Gaul almoft every year were frozen over for months, fo that armed nations, with their families, cattle, and incumbrances, patted regu- larly over them upon the ice without fear ; an event that happens not now once in a century. In Pruflia* alfo were found white bears, an animal now confined to the fevereft fnowy regions of the north ; and, what comes ftill nearer to the prefent fubject, in the infcription found in Abyflinia by Cofmas Indoplauftes, Ptolomams Evergetes, fpeaking there, in the firft perfon,of his own conquefts in Ethiopia, fays, that he had palled the river Siris, and had entered the kingdom of Samen, a country intolerable on account of cold and deep £now.

This account I think almoft incredible. Ptolemy parted from Egypt, his fleet coafting along the Red Sea, oppofite to his army, and carrying provifions for it ; we know, more- over, the time his fliips failed, the beginning of June, when the Nile was overflowed, and confequently of great utility to his army on the firft part of his expedition, while he was in Egypt and part of Nubia. Now fuppofing him to pafs

the

Paufanius Arcad. chap. xvii.