Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/747

 THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 721

who cites the authority of Leo Africanus, and that of his monk Gregory, both of them, in thefe relpeds, fully as much miftaken as the Nubian geographer himfelf. M.Ludolf, after quoting a paffage of Pliny, tells us that he had confulted the famous Bochart Upon that fubject, whether the Nile and the Niger (the river that runs through Nigritia into the Weftern Ocean) were one and the fame river ? The famous Bochart anfwers him peremptorily in the true fpirit of a fchoolman, — That there is nothing more certain than that the Niger is a part of the river Nile. With great fubmimon, however, I mull venture to fay there is not the leail founda- tion, for this allertion.

Pliny feems the firfl who gave rife to it, but he fpeaks modetlly upon the fubjeet, giving his reafons as he goes along. " Nigri fluvio eadem natura, quae Nilo, calamum " & papyrum, & eafdem gignit animantes, iifdemque " temporibus augefcit. *" That it has the fame foil from which the Nile takes its colour, the water is the fame in talle, produces the fame reeds, and efpecially the papyrus; has the fame animals in it, fucli as the crocodile and hip- popotamus, and overflows at the fame feafon ; this is faying nothing but what maybe applied with equal truth to every other river between the northern tropic and the Line ; but the other two authors, the Nubian and the monk, alien each cf them a direct falfehood. The Nubian fays, that if the Nile carried all the rains that fall in Abyffinia down into Egypt, the people would not be fafe in their houfes. To this I anfwer by a matter of fact, the map of the whole

Vol. III. 4 Y courfe

Plin, lib. v. cap. 8.