Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/615

 THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 587

had got the better of their other fenfations. hi iliort, there was nothing more vifible, than that their apprehenfions were of two forc-^, and produced very different operations. The fimoom, the talking pillars of fand, and probability of dying with thirft or hunger, brought on a torpor, or in- difference, that made them inaftive; but the difcovery of the Arab at Terfowey, the fear of meeting the Bifhareen at the wells, and the dead bodies of the Aga and his unfor- tunate companions, produced a degree of adtivity and irri- tation that refembled very much their fpirits being elevated by good news. I told them, that, of all the places in the defert through which they had pafled, this was by far the fafeft, becaufe fear of being met by troops from AlTouan, feeking the murderers of Mahomet Towafla would keep all the Bifliareen at a diftance. Our Arab faid, that the next well belonged to the Ababde, and not the Bifliareen, and that the Bifliareen had flain the Aga there, to make men believe it had been done by the Ababde. Idris contributed his morfel of comfort, by afTuring us, that the wells now, as far as Egypt, were fo fcanty of water, that no party above ten men would truft their provifion to them, and none of us had the leaft apprehenfion from marauders of twice that number. The night at Umarack was exceflively cold as to fenfation ; Falirenheit's thermometer was however at 49° an hour before day-light.

On the 23d we left Umarack at fix o'clock in the morn- ing, our road this day being between mountains of blue ftones of a very fine and perfecfl quality, through the heart of which ran thick veins of jaiper, their llrata perpendicu- lar to the horizon. There were other mountains of marble of the colour called Ifabella. In other places the rock feem-

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