Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/745

 THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 719

confift of furs, cotton, filk, and woollen cloths, which are fluffs the moft retentive of the infection, no accident hap- pens to thofe who wear them from this their happy con- fidence.

I shall here fum up all that I have to fay relating to the river Nile, with a tradition handed down to us by Herodo- tus, the father of ancient hiftory, upon which moderns lefs inftru^ted have grafted a number of errors. Herodotus * fays, that he was informed by the fecretary of Minerva's treafury, that one half of the water of the Nile flowed due north into Egypt, while the other half took an oppofite courfe, and flowed diredUy fouth into Ethiopia.

The fecretary was probably of that country himfelf, and feems by his observation to have known more of it than all the ancients together. In fact, we have feen that, between 1 3 and 14 N. latitude,*the Nile, with all its tributary itrcams, which have their rife and courfe within the tropical rains, falls down into the flat country, (the kingdom of Sennaar), which is more than a mile lower than the high country in AbyiTmia, and thence, with a little inclination, it runs into- Egypt..

Again, in lat. 9 in the kingdom of Gingero, the Zebee runs fouth, or fouth-eait, into the inner Ethiopia, as do ajfo many other rivers, and, as I have heard from the natives of that country, empty themfelves into a lake, as thofe on the north of the Line do into the lake Tzana; thence diflribiwe

their


 * Herod. lib. ii. p. 98. feft.22.