Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/498

 I brought from Abyssinia, lived only a few weeks after I arrived. They seemed to have some inward complaint, for nothing appeared outwardly. The dogs had abundance of water, but I killed one of them from apprehension of madness. Several kings have tried to keep lions, but no care could prolong their lives beyond the first rains, Shekh Adelan had two, which were in great health, being kept with his horses at grass in the sands but three miles from Sennaar: neither rose, nor any species of jasmine, grow here; no tree but the lemon flowers near the city, that ever I saw; the rose has been often tried, but in vain.

Sennaar is in lat. 13° 34' 36" north, and in long. 33° 30' 30" call from the meridian of Greenwich. It is on the west side of the Nile, and close upon the banks of it. The ground whereon it stands rises just enough to prevent the river from entering the town, even in the height of the inundation, when it comes to be even with the street. Poncet says, that when he was at this city, his companion, father Brevedent, a Jesuit, an able mathematician, on the 2nd of March 1699, determined the latitude of Sennaar to be 13° 4' N. the difference therefore will be about half a degree. The reader however may implicitly rely upon the situation I have given it, being the mean result of above fifty observations, made both night and day, on the most favourable occasions, by a quadrant of three feet radius, and telescopes of two, and some times of three feet focal length, both reflectors and refractors made by the best masters.

The town of Sennaar is very populous, there being in it many good houses after the fashion of the country. Poncet says, in his time they were all of one storey high; but now