Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/746

 7 2o TRAVELS TO DISCOVER

their waters to the eaft and to the weft. Thefe become the heads of great rivers that run through che interior cqutl- tries of Ethiopia (correfponding to the fea-coaft or Melinda and Mombaza) into the Indian Ocean, whilft, on the weft- ward, they are the origin of the valt i i; s that fall into the Atlantic, palling through Benin and Congo, fouthward of the river Gambea, and the Sierraleona.

In fhort, the periodical rains from the tropic of Capricorn to the Line, being in equal quantity with thofe that fall between the Line and the tropic of Cancer, it is plain, that if the land of Ethiopia floped equally from the Line fouth- ward and northward, half of the rains that fall on each fide would go north, and half fouth, but as the ground from 5* N. declines all fouthward, it follows that the river which runs to the fouthward mull be equal to thofe that run to the northward, plus the rain that falls in the 5 north latitude, where the ground begins to flope to the fouthward, and there can be little doubt this is at lead one of the reafons why there are in the fouthern continent fo many rivers larger than the Nile that run both into the Indian and At- lantic Oceans.

From this very true and fenfible relation handed to us by Herodotus, from the authority of the fecretary or Minerva, the Nubian geographer has framed a fiction of his own, which is, that the river Nile divides itfelfinto two branch es,one of which runs into Egypt northward, and one through the country of the negroes weilward, into the Atlantic Ocean. And this opinion has been greedily adopted by M. Ludolf*,

who

in defcrip. Africa, lib. i. C3p. < ii.
 * Vid. Ludolf in Proemio Hiftor. iEt'.-iop. i. 8. K. lib. !. cap. yiii. p. 178. L;o Africam.8