Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/730

 704 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER

each peek than the Samian peek ; fo that if, to 20 peeks oT Seide, you add twenty times four inches, which is 80, the difference of the two peeks, when divided by 18, gives four, which, added to the 20 peeks on the column, make 24 peeks, the number fought. Secondly, That this obfervation in the Han el Mohaderat fufficiently confirms what I have faid both of the length of the column and length of the peek ; that the former is 20 peeks in height, and that the meafure, by which this is afcertained, is the peek El Belledy of 22 inches, as it appears on the brafs rod, four inches longer than the Samian peek, and confequently is not the peek of Stambouline, nor any foreign meafune whatever.

A traveller thinks he has attained to a great deal of precifion, when, obferving 18 peeks on the higheft diviiion of the column from its bafe, or bottom of the well, he finds it 37 feet ; he divides this by 18, and the quotient is 24 inches; when he mould divide it by 20, and the anfwer would be 22 and a fraction, the true content of the peek El Belledy, 01 peek of the Mikeas. This erroneous divifion of his he calls the peek of the Mikeas ; and comparing it with what authors, lefs informed than himfelf, have faid, he names the Stambouline peek, and then the black peek, when it really is his own peek, the creature of his own er- ror or inadvertence ; but, as he does not know this, it is handed down from traveller to traveller, till unfortunately it is adopted by fome man of reputation, and it then be- comes, as in this cafe, a fort of literary crime to any man, from the authority of his own eyes and hands, to difpute it.

TVIr