Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/317

 On the 31st of December we left our station at the head of a difficult pass called Coy Gulgulet, or the Descent of Coy, at the foot of which runs the river Coy, one of the largest we had yet seen, but I did not discern any fish in it. Here we rested a little to refresh ourselves and our beasts, after the fatigues we had met with in descending through this pass.

At half after eight we came to the banks of the Germa, which winds along the valley, and falls into the Angrab. After having continued some time by the side of the Germa, and crossed it going N. W. we, at ten, passed the small river Idola; and half an hour after came to Deber, a house of Ayto Confu, on the top of a mountain, by the side of a small river of that name. The country here is partly in wood, and partly in plantations of dora. It is very well watered and seems to produce abundant crops; but it is not beautiful; the soil is red earth, and the bottoms of all the rivers soft and earthy, the water heavy, and generally ill-tasted, even in the large rivers, such as the Coy and the Germa. I imagine there is some mineral in the red earth, with a proportion of which the water is impregnated.

At Deber, I observed the following bearings from the mountains; Ras el Feel was west, Tcherkin N. N. W. Debra Haria, north. We found nobody at Deber that could give us the least account of Ayto Confu. We left it, therefore, on the morning of the 1st of January 1772. At half past ten o'clock we passed a small village called Dembic, and about mid-day came to the large river Tchema, which falls into the larger river Dwang, below, to the westward. About an hour after, we came to the Mogetch, a river not so large