Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/717

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told to Omar, he ordered the new Milometer to be demolifli- ed ; but as it had been part of the complaint to him, that their counting the divifions of the Mikeas * was the reafon why the people were kept in continual terror, he fhut up the accefs to Chriilians, and that prohibition continues in Cairo to this day ; and, inftead of permitting ocular infpec- tion, he ordered the daily increafe to be proclaimed, but in a manner fo unintelligible, that the Egyptians in general no longer underttood it, nor do they underftand it now; for, be- ginning at a given point, which was not the bottom of the Nilometer, he went on, telling the increafe by fubtra&ing from the upper divifion; fo that as nobody knew the lower point from which he began, although they might compre- hend how much it had rifen fince the crier proclaimed its increafe, yet they never could know the height of the water that was in the Nilometer when the proclamation began, nor what the divifion was to which it had afcended on the pillar.

To underftand this, let us premife, that, on the point of the ifland Rhoda, between Geeza and Cairo, near the middle of the river, but nearer to Geeza, is a round tower, and in that an apartment, in the middle of which is a very neat well, or ciftern, lined with marble, to which the Nile has free accefs, through a large opening like an embrafure, the bottom of the well being on the fame level with the bottom of the river. In the middle of this well rifes a thin column, as far as I can remember, of eight faces of blue and white marble, to the foot of which, if you are permitted to defcend,

4 S 2 you

Oi Nilometer.