Chapter XXVI: Book VI (12)

In the reign of the second emperor after the Roman conquest, Petronius Arbiter, a man well known for taste and learning, was governor of Egypt. He saw with regret the decay of the magnificent works of the ancient native Egyptian princes. His sagacity penetrated the usefulness and propriety of those works. He saw they had once made Egypt populous and flourishing. Like a good citizen and subject of the state he served, and from a humane and rational attachment to that which he governed, he hoped to make it again as flourishing under the new government as it had been under the old. Like a man of sense, and master of his subject, he laughed at the dastardly spirit of the modern Egyptians, anxious and trembling lest the Nile should not overflow land enough to give them bread, when they had the power in their hands to procure plenty in abundance for six times the number of the people then in Egypt. To shew them this, he repaired their ancient works, raised their banks, refitted their sluices, and by thus imprisoning, as I may say, the inundation at a proper time in the beginning, he overflowed all Egypt with 8 peeks of water, as fully, and as effectually, as to the purposes of agriculture, as before and since it hath been with 16; and did not open the sluices to allow the water to run and waste in the desert (where there was now no longer any inhabitants), till the land of the valley of Egypt had been so well watered as only to need that the inundation should retire in time to leave the farmer the ground firm enough for plowing and sowing.

Let any one read what I have already quoted from Strabo; it is just what I have here repeated, but in fewer words. Let him consider how fair an experiment this of Petronius was, that by re-establishing the works of Mæris, and putting the inundation to the same profit that Mæris did, he found the same quantity of water overflow the same quantity of ground, and consequently, that the land of Egypt had not been raised an inch from Mæris’s time to that of Petronius, above 1400 years.

Now the second part of the question comes, what difference of measure was made by the Saracens, and how does it now stand, after that period, as to the supposed rise of a foot in a hundred years? It is now above 1100 years since the[165] first of the Hegira, and near 900 years since the erection of the present Mikeas, which being equal to the period between Mæris and Herodotus, and again to that between Herodotus and Julian, we should begin to be certain if any such increase in the land has ever, from Mæris to the present time, been indicated by the Nilometer.

The reader will perhaps be surprised, at what I am going to advance, That those writers, as well as their supporters who have pronounced so positively on this subject, have not furnished themselves with the _data_ which are absolutely necessary to solve this question. Quantity is only to be ascertained by measure, yet none of them have settled that only medium of judging. The Mikeas, or pillar, is the subject to be measured, and they are not yet agreed within 20 feet of its extreme height, nor about the division of any part of it. As this accusation appears to be a strong one, I shall set down the proof for the reader’s consideration, that it may not be supposed I mean to criticise improperly, or to do any author injustice.

And first of the Mikeas. Mr Thomas Humes, a gentleman quoted by[166] Dr Shaw, who had been a great many years a factor at Cairo, says, that the Mikeas is 58 feet English in height. Now, there is really no reason why such an enormous pillar should have been built, as the Nile would drown all Cairo before it was to rise to this height; accordingly, as we have seen, its height is not so much by near 22 feet. Dr Perry[167] next, who has wrote largely upon the subject, says, the Mikeas, or column, is divided into 24 peeks, and each peek or cubit is 24 inches nearly. Dr Pococke[168], who travelled at the same time, agrees in the division of 24 peeks, but says that these peeks are unequal. The 16 lower he supposes are 21 inches, the 4 next, 24 inches, and the uppermost, 22. So that one of these gentlemen makes the Mikeas 43 feet, which is above six feet more than the truth, and the other 48, which is above 11; besides the second error which Dr Pococke has committed, by saying the divisions are of three different dimensions, when they really are not any one of them what he conceives, nor is the Mikeas divided unequally.

As for Mr Humes, who had lived long at Cairo, I would by no means be thought to insinuate a doubt of his veracity: There may, in change of times, be occasions when Christians may be admitted to the Mikeas, and be allowed to measure exactly. This, however, must be with a long rod, divided and brought on purpose, with a high stool or scaffold, and this sort of preparation would be attended with much danger if seen in the hand of a Christian without, and much more if he was to attempt to apply it to the column within. At Cairo a man may see or hear any thing he desires, by the ordinary means of gold, which no Turk can withstand or refuse; but often one villain is paid for being your guide, and another villain, his brother, pays himself, by informing against you; the end is mischief to yourself, which, if you are a stranger, generally involves also your friends. You are asked, What did you at the Mikeas when you know it is forbidden? and your silence after that question is an acknowledgement of guilt; sentence immediately follows, whatever it may be, and execution upon it. I rather am inclined to think, that though several Christians have obtained admission to the Mikeas, very few have had the means or instruments, and fewer still the courage, to measure this column exactly; which leads me to believe, as Dr Shaw says, he procured the number of feet in a letter from Mr Humes, that the Doctor has mistaken 58 for 38, which, in a foreign hand, is very easily done; it would then be 38, instead of 58 English feet, and to that number it might approach near enough, and the difference be accounted for, from an aukward manner of measuring with a trembling hand, there being then only a little more than one foot of error.

From what I have just now mentioned, I hope it is sufficiently plain to the reader, that the length and division of the column in the Mikeas, by which the quantity of water, and consequently the increase of the soil, was to be determined, was utterly unknown to those travellers who had undertaken this mode of determining it.

I shall now inquire, whether they were better instructed in the length of that measure, which, after the Saracen conquest, was introduced into the Nilometer, of Geeza, where it has remained unaltered since the year 245? Dr Shaw introduces the consideration of this subject by an enumeration of many different peeks, seven of which he quotes from Arabian authors, as being then in use. First, the Homaræus 1-2/9 digit of the common cubit. 2. The Hasamean, or greater peek, of 24 digits. 3. The Belalæan, less than the Hasamean. 4. The black cubit less than the Belalean 2⅔ digits. 5. The Jossippæan ⅔ of a digit less than the black cubit. 6. The Chord, or Asaba, 1⅔ digit less than the black peek. 7. The Maharanius, 2⅔ digits less than the black cubit[169]. Now, I will appeal to any one to what all this information amounts, when I am not told the length of the common peek to which he refers the rest, as being 1½ digit, or 2 digits more or less. He himself thinks that the measuring peek is the Stambouline peek, but then, for computation’s sake, he takes a peek of his own invention, being a medium of 4 or 5 guesses, and fixes it at 25 inches, for which he has no authority but his own imagination.

I will not perplex the reader more with the different measures of these peeks, between the Hasamean and great peek of Kalkasendas, which is 18 inches, and the black peek, a model of which Dr Bernard[170] has given us from an Arabic MS. at Oxford, the difference is 10 inches. The first being 18 inches equal to the Samian peek, the other 28½ inches, and from this difference we may judge, joined to the uncertainties of the height and divisions of the Mikeas, how impossible it is for us to determine the increase of 12 inches in a hundred years.

As the generality of writers have fixed upon the Constantinople, or Stambouline peek, for the measure of the Mikeas, in which choice they have erred, we will next seek what is the measure of the Stambouline peek, and whether they have in this article been better informed.

M. de Maillet, French consul at Cairo, says, that this peek is equal to 2 French feet, or very nearly 26 inches of our measure: and, to add to this another mistake, he states, that by this peek the Mikeas is measured; and, for the completing of the confusion, he adds, that the Nile must rise 48 French feet before it covers _all their lands_. What he means by all their lands is to very little purpose to inquire, for he would probably have been drowned in his closet in which he made these computations, long before he had seen the Nile at that height, or near it.

Without, then, wandering longer in this extraordinary confusion, which I have only stated to shew that a traveller may differ from Dr Shaw, and yet be right, and that this writer, however learned he may be, cannot, for want of information, be competent to solve this question which he so much insists upon, I shall now, with great submission to the judgment of my reader, endeavour to explain, in as few words as possible, how the real state of the matter stands, and he will then apply it as he pleases.

There was a very ingenious gentleman whom I met with at Cairo, M. Antes, a German by birth, and of the Moravian persuasion, who, both to open to himself more freely the opportunities of propagating his religious tenets, and to gratify his own mechanical turn, rather than from a view of gain, to which all his society are (as he was) perfectly indifferent, exercised the trade of watch-maker at Cairo. This very worthy and sagacious young man was often my unwearied and useful partner in many inquiries and trials, as to the manner of executing some instruments in the most compendious form for experiments proposed to be made in my travels. By his assistance, I formed a rod of brass, of half an inch square, and of a thickness which did not easily warp, and would not alter its dimensions unless with a violent heat. Upon the three faces of this brasen rod we traced, with good glasses and dividers, the measure of three different peeks, then the only three known in Cairo, the exact length of which was taken from the standard model furnished me by the Cadi. The first was the Stambouline, or Constantinople peek, exactly 23⅗ inches; the second, the Hendaizy, of 24-7/10 inches; and the third the peek El Belledy, of 22 inches, all English measure.

It was natural to suppose, that, after knowing as we do, that no alteration has been made in the Mikeas since the 245th year of the Hegira, that the peek of Constantinople, a foreign measure, was probably then not known, nor introduced into Egypt; nor, till after the conquest of Sultan Selim, in the year 1516, was it likely to be the peek with which the Mikeas was measured. It did not, as I conceive, exist in the 245th of the Hegira, though, even if it had, its dimensions may have been widely different from those fixed upon by the number of writers whose authority we have quoted, but who do not agree. It was not likely to be the Hendaizy peek either, for this, too, was a foreign measure, originally from the island of Meroë, and well known to the Egyptians in Upper Egypt, but not at all to the Saracens their present masters. The peek, El Belledy, the measure in common use, and known to all the Egyptians, was the proper cubit to be employed in an operation which concerned a whole nation, and was, therefore, the measure made use of in the division of the Mikeas, for that column, as I have said, is divided equally into peeks, or draas, called _Draa El Belledy_, consisting of 22 inches; and each of these peeks is again divided into 24 digits.

A very ingenious author, who treats of the particular circumstances of those times, in his MS. called _Han el Mohaderat_, says, that the inhabitants of Seide counted 24 peeks on their Nilometer, when there were 18 peeks marked as the rise of the water upon the Mikeas at Rhoda; and this shews perfectly two things: First, That they knew the whole secret of counting there both by the marked and unmarked part of the column; for the peek of the Mikeas being 22 inches English, it was, by consequence, four inches larger each peek than the Samian peek; so that if, to 20 peeks of Seide, you add twenty times four inches, which is 80, the difference of the two peeks, when divided by 18, gives four, which, added to the 20 peeks on the column, make 24 peeks, the number sought. Secondly, That this observation in the Han el Mohaderat sufficiently confirms what I have said both of the length of the column and length of the peek; that the former is 20 peeks in height, and that the measure, by which this is ascertained, is the peek El Belledy of 22 inches, as it appears on the brass rod, four inches longer than the Samian peek, and consequently is not the peek of Stambouline, nor any foreign measure whatever.

A traveller thinks he has attained to a great deal of precision, when, observing 18 peeks on the highest division of the column from its base, or bottom of the well, he finds it 37 feet; he divides this by 18, and the quotient is 24 inches; when he should divide it by 20, and the answer would be 22 and a fraction, the true content of the peek El Belledy, or peek of the Mikeas. This erroneous division of his he calls the peek of the Mikeas; and comparing it with what authors, less informed than himself, have said, he names the Stambouline peek, and then the black peek, when it really is his own peek, the creature of his own error or inadvertence; but, as he does not know this, it is handed down from traveller to traveller, till unfortunately it is adopted by some man of reputation, and it then becomes, as in this case, a sort of literary crime to any man, from the authority of his own eyes and hands, to dispute it.

Mr Pococke makes two very curious and sensible remarks in point of fact, but of which he does not know the reason. “The Nile, he says, in the beginning, turns red, and sometimes green; then the waters are unwholesome. He supposes that the source of the Nile beginning to flow plentifully, the waters at first bring away that green or red filth which may be about the lakes at its rise, or at the rise of these small rivers that flow into it, near its principal source; for, though there is so little water in the Nile, when at lowest, that there is hardly any current in many parts of it, yet it cannot be supposed that the water should stagnate in the bed of the Nile, so as to become green. Afterwards the water becomes very red and still more turbid, and then it begins to be wholesome[171].”

The true reason of this appearance is from those immense marshes spread over the country about Narea and Caffa, where there is little level, and where the water accumulates, and is stagnant, before it overflows into the river Abiad, which rises there. The overflowing of these immense marshes carry first that discoloured water into Egypt, then follows, in Abyssinia, the overflowing of the great lake Tzana, through which the Nile passes, which, having been stagnated and without rain for six months, under a scorching sun, joins its putrid waters with the first. There are, moreover, very few rivers in Abyssinia that run after November, as they stand in prodigious pools below, in the country of the Shangalla, and afford drink for the elephant, and habitation and food for the hippopotamus. These pools likewise throw off their stagnant water into the Nile on receiving the first rains; at last the rivers, marshes, and lakes, being refreshed by showers, (the rain becoming constant) and passing through the kingdom of Sennaar, the soil of which is a red bole; This mixture, and the moving sands of the deserts, fall into the current, and precipitate all the viscous and putrid substances, which cohere and float in the river; and thence (as Pococke has well observed) the sign of the Nile being wholesome, is not when it is clear and green, but when mingled with fresh water, and after precipitation it becomes red and turbid, and stains the water of the Mediterranean.

The next remark of Mr Pococke[172] is equally true. It has been observed, says he, that after the rainy season is over, the Nile fallen, and the whole country drained from inundation, it has begun again to rise; and he gives an instance of that in December 1737, when it had a sudden increase, which alarmed all Egypt, where the received opinion was that it presaged calamities. This also is said to have happened in the time of Cleopatra, when their government was subverted, their ancient race of kings extinguished in the person of that princess, and Egypt became a province to the Romans.

The reader will not expect, in these enlightened times, that I should use arguments to convince him, that this rising of the Nile had nothing to do with the extinction of the race of the Ptolemies, though popular preachers and prophets have always made use of these fortuitous events to confirm the vulgar in their prejudices.

The rains, that cease in Abyssinia about the 8th of September, leave generally a sickly season in the low country; but other rains begin towards the end of October, in the last days of the Ethiopic month Tekemt, which continue moderately about three weeks, and end the 8th of November, or the 12th of the Ethiopic month Hedar. All sickness and epidemical diseases then disappear, and the 8th of that month is the feast of St Michael, the day the king marches, and his army begins their campaign; but the effect of these second rains seldom make any, or a very short appearance in Egypt, all the canals being open. But these are the rains upon which depend their latter crops, and for which the Agows, at the source of the Nile, pray to the river, or to the genius residing in the river. We had plentiful showers both in going and coming to that province, especially in our journey out. Whenever these rains prove excessive, as in some particular years it seems they do, though but very rarely, the land-floods, and those from the marshes, falling upon the ground, already much hardened and broken into chasms, by two months intense heat of the sun, run violently into the Nile without sinking into the earth. The consequence is this temporary rising of the Nile in December, which is as unconnected with the good and bad crops of Egypt, as it is on those of Palestine or Syria.

The quantity of rain that falls in Ethiopia varies greatly from year to year, as do the months in which it falls. The quantity that fell, during 1770, in Gondar, between the vernal equinox and the 8th of September, through a funnel of one foot English in diameter, was 35.555 inches; and, in 1771, the quantity that fell in the same circumference was 41.355 inches in the same space[173].

In 1770, August was the rainy month; in 1771 July. Both these years the people paid the meery, and the _Wafaa Ullah_ was in August. When July is the rainy month, the rains generally cease for some days in the beginning of August, and then a prodigious deal falls in the latter end of that month and the first week of September. In other years, July and August are the violent rainy months, whilst June is fair. And lastly, in others, May, June, July, August and the first week of September. Now we shall suppose (which is the most common case of all) that every month from June doubles its rain. The _Wafaa Ullah_ generally takes place about the 9th of August, the tribute being then due, and all attention to the Mikeas is abandoned at 14 real peeks, the Calish is then cut, and the water let down to the Delta.

Now these 14 peeks are not a proof how much water there is to overflow the land; for supposing nine days for its passage from Ethiopia, then the 9th of August receives at Cairo no later rains than those that have fallen the 1st of August in Ethiopia, and from that date till the 17th of September, the Nile increases one third of its whole inundation, which is never suffered to appear on the Mikeas, but is turned down to the lakes in the Delta, as I suppose it always has been; so that the quantity of water which falls in Ethiopia hath never yet been ascertained, and never can be by the Mikeas, nor can it ever be known what quantity of water comes in to Egypt, or what quantity of ground it is sufficient to overflow, unless the dykes were to be kept close till the Nile attained its extreme height,which would be about the 25th of September, long before which it would be over the banks and mounds, if they held in till then, or have swept Cairo and all the Delta into the Mediterranean, and if it should not do that, it would retire so late from the fields as to leave the ground in no condition to be sown that year.

I do not comprehend what idea other travellers have formed of the beginning of the inundation of the Nile, as they seem to admit that the banks are not overflowed; and this is certainly the case; because the cities and villages are built there as securely as on the highest part of Egypt, and even when the Nile has risen to its greatest height they still are obliged to water those spots with machines. In another part of the work it is explained how the calishes carry the water upon the lands, approaching always to the banks as the river rises in proportion, and these calishes being derived from the Nile at right angles with the stream, and carrying the water by the inclination of the ground, in a direction different from the course of the river, the water is perfectly stagnated at the foot of the hills, till accumulated as the stream rises, it moves in a contrary direction backwards again, and approaches its banks. But when the inundation is so great that the back-water comes in contact with the current of the Nile, by known laws it must partake the same motion with it, and so all Egypt become one torrent.

Dr Shaw, indeed[174], says, that there seems to be a descent from the banks to the foot of the mountains, but this he considers as an optic fallacy; I wish he had told us upon what principle of optics; but if it was really so, how comes it that the banks are every year dry, when the foot of the mountains is at same time under inundation; or, in other words, what is the reason of that undisputed fact, that the foot of the mountains is laid under water in the beginning of the rivers rising, while the ground which they cultivate by labour near the banks, cannot supply itself from the river by machines, till near the height of the inundation? these facts will not be contraverted by any traveller, who has ever been in Upper Egypt; but if this had been admitted as truth instead of an optic fallacy, this question would have immediately followed. If the land of Egypt at the foot of the mountains, is the lowest, the first overflowed, and the longest covered with water, and often the only part overflowed at all, whence can it arise that it is not upon a level with the banks of the river if it is true that the land of Egypt receives additional height every year by the mud from Abyssinia deposited by the stream? and this question would not have been so easily answered.

The Nile for these thirty years has but once so failed as to occasion dearth, but never in that period so as to produce famine in Egypt. The redundance of the water sweeping every thing before it, has thrice been the cause, not of dearth, but of famine and emigration; but carelessness, I believe, hath been, the occasion of both, and very often the malice of the Arabs; for there are in Egypt, from Siout downwards, great remains of ancient works, vast lakes, canals, and large conduits for water, destined by the ancients to keep this river under controul, serving as reservoirs to supply a scanty year, and as drains, or outlets, to prevent the over abundance of water in wet years, by spreading it in the thirsty sands of Libya to the great advantage of the Arabs, rather than letting it run to waste in the Mediterranean. The mouths of these immense drains being out of repair, in a scanty year, contribute by their evacuation to make it still scantier by not retaining water, and if after a dearth they are well secured, or raised too high, and a wet season follows, they then occasion a destructive inundation.

I hope I have now satisfied the reader, that Egypt was never an arm of the sea, or formed by sediments brought down in the Nile, but that it was created with other parts of the globe at the same time, and for the same purposes; and we are warranted to say this, till we receive from the hand of Providence a work of such imperfection, that its destruction can be calculated from the very means by which it was first formed, and which were the apparent sources of its beauty and pre-eminence. Egypt, like other countries, will perish by the _fiat_ of Him that made it, but when, or in what manner, lies hid where it ought to be, inaccessible to the useless, vain inquiries, and idle speculations of man.

CHAP. XVIII.

_Inquiry about the Possibility of changing the Course of the Nile--Cause of the Nucta._

It has been thought a problem that merited to be considered, Whether it was possible to turn the current of the Nile into the Red Sea, and thereby to famish Egypt? I think the question should more properly be, Whether the water of the Nile, running into Egypt, could be so diminished, or diverted, that it should never be sufficient to prepare that country for annual cultivation? Now to this it is answered, That there seems to be no doubt but that it is possible, because the Nile, and all the rivers that run into it, and all the rains that swell those rivers, fall in a country fully two miles above the level of the sea; therefore, it cannot be denied, that there is level enough to divert many of the rivers into the Red Sea, the Indian, and Atlantic Oceans, or, perhaps, still easier, by turning the course of the river Abiad till it meets the level of the Niger, or pass through the desert into the Mediterranean.

Lalibala, as we have already seen, attempted the former method with great appearance of success; and this prince, to whom the accidental circumstances of the time had given extraordinary powers, and who was otherwise a man of great capacity and resolution, might, if he had persevered, completed his purpose, the thing being possible, that is, no law of nature against it, and all difficulties are only relative to the powers vested in those who are engaged in the undertaking. Alexander the Great would have succeeded--his father Philip would have miscarried--Lewis the XIV. would perhaps have accomplished it, as easily as he united the two seas by the canal of Languedoc, and with the same engineers; but he is the only European prince of whom this could have been expected with any degree of probability.

Alphonso Albuquerque, viceroy of India, is said to have wrote frequently to the king of Portugal, Don Emanuel, to send him some pioneers from Madeira, people accustomed to level ground, and prepare it for sugar-canes, with whose assistance he was to execute that enterprise of turning the Nile into the Red Sea, and famishing Egypt. His son mentions this very improbable story in his[175] father’s commentaries; and he says further, that he imagines it might have been done, because it was a known fact that the Arabs in Upper Egypt, when in rebellion against the Soldan, used to interrupt the course of the canal between Cosseir on the Red Sea, and Kenna in Egypt.

Tellez and le Grande, mentioning the two opinions of the father and the son upon this subject, give great praise to the son at the expence of the father, but without reason.

In the first place, we have seen that the utmost exertion Don Emanuel could make was to send 400 men to assist the king of Abyssinia, whose country was then almost conquered by the Turks and Moors. It was not then from India we were to expect the execution of so arduous an undertaking. And as to the second, the younger Albuquerque is mistaken egregiously in point of fact, for there never was a canal between Cosseir and Kenna, the goods from the Red Sea were transported by a caravan, and are so yet. We have seen, in the beginning of this work, the account of my travelling thither from Kenna; this intercourse probably was often interrupted by the Arabs in the days he mentions, and so it is still; but it is the caravan, not the canal, that is stopt by the Arabs, for no canal ever existed.

The sum of all this story is, a long and violent persecution followed the conquest of Egypt by the Saracens, who were accustomed to live in tents, which, with their dislike to the Christian churches, made them destroy all the buildings of stone, as also persecute the masons, whom they considered as being employed in the advancement of idolatry: these unhappy workmen, therefore, fled in numbers to Lalibala, an Abyssinian prince of their own religion, who employed them in many stupendous works for diverting the Nile into the Red Sea, or the Indian Ocean, which I have already described, and which exist entire to this day[176].

This idea, indeed, had subsisted as long as the royal family lived in the south part of Abyssinia, in Shoa, in the neighbourhood, and sometimes on the very spot where the attempt was made. When the court, however, removed northward, and the princes, no longer confined in Geshen, (a mountain in Amhara) were imprisoned, as they now are, in Wechné, in Belessen, near Gondar, these transactions of remote times and places were gradually forgot, and often misrepresented; though, so far down as the beginning of this century, we find Tecla Haimanout I.[177] (king of Abyssinia) expostulating by a letter with the basha of Cairo upon the murder of the French envoy M. du Roule, and threatening the Turkish regency, that, it they persisted in such misbehaviour, he would make the Nile the instrument of his vengeance, the keys of which were in his hand, to give them famine or plenty, as they should deserve of him. In my time, no sensible man in Abyssinia believed that such a thing was possible, and few that it had ever been attempted.

As for the opinion of those, that the Nile may be turned into the Red Sea from Nubia or Egypt, it deserves no answer. What could be the motive of such an undertaking? Would the Egyptians suffer such an operation to be carried on in their own country for the sake of starving themselves? and if the country had been taken from them by an enemy, still it could not be the interest of that conqueror to let the inhabitants, now become his subjects, perish, and much less to reduce them to the necessity of so doing by such an undertaking.

Much has been wrote about a miraculous drop, or dew, called Gotta, or Nucta, which falls in Egypt precisely on St John’s day, and is believed to be the peculiar gift of that saint; it stops the plague, causes dough to leaven, or ferment, and announces a speedy and plentiful inundation.

I hope my reader will not expect that I should enter into the discussion of the part St John is thought to have in this event, my business is only with natural causes.

Memphis and Alexandria, and all the ancient cities of Lower Egypt, stand upon cisterns, into which the Nile, upon its overflowing, was admitted, and there remained till it had deposited all its sediment, and became fit for drinking. These cisterns are now full of filth; though in disrepair, the water, when the Nile is high insinuates itself into them through the broken conduits.

In February and March the sun is on its approach to the zenith of one extremity of Egypt, and of course has a very considerable influence upon the other. The Nile being now fallen low, the water in the cisterns putrifies, and the river itself has lost all its volatile and finer parts by the continued action of a vertical sun; so that, instead of being subject to evaporation, it becomes daily more and more inclined to putrefaction. About St John’s day[178] it receives a plentiful mixture of the fresh and fallen rain from Ethiopia, which dilutes and refreshes the almost corrupted river, and the sun near at hand exerts its natural influence upon the water, which now is become light enough to be exhaled, though it has still with it a mixture of the corrupted fluid, so that it rises but a small height during the first few days of the inundation, then falls down and returns to the earth in plentiful and abundant dews; and that this is really so, I am persuaded from what I observed myself at Cairo.

My quadrant was placed on the flat roof, or terrass, of a gentleman’s house where I was taking observations; I had gone down to supper, and soon after returned, when I found the brass limb of the quadrant covered with small drops of dew, which were turned to a perfect green, or copperas colour; and this green had so corroded the brass in an hour’s time, that the marks remained on the limb of the quadrant for six months; and the cavities made by the corrosion were plainly discernible through a microscope.

It is in February, March, or April only, that the plague begins in Egypt. I do not believe it an endemial disease, I rather think it comes from Constantinople with merchandise, or passengers, and at this time of the year that the air having attained a degree of putridity proper to receive it by the long absence of dews, the infection is thereto joined, and continues to rage till the period I just spoke of, when it is suddenly stopped by the dews occasioned by a refreshing mixture of rain-water, which is poured out into the Nile at the beginning of the inundation.

The first and most remarkable sign of the change brought about in the air is the sudden stopping of the plague at Saint John’s day; every person, though shut up from society for months before, buys, sells, and communicates with his neighbour without any sort of apprehension; and it was never known, as far as I could learn upon fair inquiry, that one fell sick of the plague after this anniversary: it will be observed I don’t say _died_; there are, I know, examples of that, though I believe but few; the plague is not always a disease that suddenly terminates, it often takes a considerable time to come to a head, appearing only by symptoms; so that people taken ill, under the most putrid influence of the air, linger on, struggling with the disease which has already got such hold that they cannot recover; but what I say, and mean is, that no person is taken ill of the plague so as to die after the dew has fallen in June; and no symptoms of the plague are ever commonly seen in Egypt but in those spring months already mentioned, the greater part of which are totally destitute of moisture.

I think the instance I am going to give, which is universally known, and cannot be denied, brings this so home that no doubt can remain of the origin of this dew, and its powerful effects upon the plague.

The Turks and Moors are known to be predestinarians; they believe the hour of man’s death is so immutably fixed that nothing can either advance or defer it an instant. Secure in this principle, they expose in the market-place, immediately after Saint John’s day, the clothes of the many thousands that have died during the late continuance of the plague, all which imbibe the moist air of the evening and the morning, are handled, bought, put on, and worn without any apprehension of danger; and though these consist of furs, cotton, silk, and woollen cloths, which are stuffs the most retentive of the infection, no accident happens to those who wear them from this their happy confidence.

I shall here sum up all that I have to say relating to the river Nile, with a tradition handed down to us by Herodotus, the father of ancient history, upon which moderns less instructed have grafted a number of errors. Herodotus[179] says, that he was informed by the secretary of Minerva’s treasury, that one half of the water of the Nile flowed due north into Egypt, while the other half took an opposite course, and flowed directly south into Ethiopia.

The secretary was probably of that country himself, and seems by his observation to have known more of it than all the ancients together. In fact, we have seen that, between 13° and 14° N. latitude, the Nile, with all its tributary streams, which have their rise and course within the tropical rains, falls down into the flat country, (the kingdom of Sennaar), which is more than a mile lower than the high country in Abyssinia, and thence, with a little inclination, it runs into Egypt.

Again, in lat. 9° in the kingdom of Gingero, the Zebeé runs south, or south-east, into the inner Ethiopia, as do also many other rivers, and, as I have heard from the natives of that country, empty themselves into a lake, as those on the north of the Line do into the lake Tzana; thence distribute their waters to the east and to the west. These become the heads of great rivers that run through the interior countries of Ethiopia (corresponding to the sea-coast of Melinda and Mombaza) into the Indian Ocean, whilst, on the westward, they are the origin of the vast streams that fall into the Atlantic, passing through Benin and Congo, southward of the river Gambea, and the Sierraleona.

In short, the periodical rains from the tropic of Capricorn to the Line, being in equal quantity with those that fall between the Line and the tropic of Cancer, it is plain, that if the land of Ethiopia sloped equally from the Line southward and northward, half of the rains that fall on each side would go north, and half south, but as the ground from 5° N. declines all southward, it follows that the river which runs to the southward must be equal to those that run to the northward, _plus_ the rain that falls in the 5° north latitude, where the ground begins to slope to the southward, and there can be little doubt this is at least one of the reasons why there are in the southern continent so many rivers larger than the Nile that run both into the Indian and Atlantic Oceans.

From this very true and sensible relation handed to us by Herodotus, from the authority of the secretary of Minerva, the Nubian geographer has framed a fiction of his own, which is, that the river Nile divides itself into two branches, one of which runs into Egypt northward, and one through the country of the negroes westward, into the Atlantic Ocean. And this opinion has been greedily adopted by M. Ludolf[180], who cites the authority of Leo Africanus, and that of his monk Gregory, both of them, in these respects, fully as much mistaken as the Nubian geographer himself. M. Ludolf, after quoting a passage of Pliny, tells us that he had consulted the famous Bochart upon that subject whether the Nile and the Niger (the river that runs through Nigritia into the Western Ocean) were one and the same river? The famous Bochart answers him peremptorily in the true spirit of a schoolman,--That there is nothing more certain than that the Niger is a part of the river Nile. With great submission, however, I must venture to say there is not the least foundation for this assertion.

Pliny seems the first who gave rise to it, but he speaks modestly upon the subject, giving his reasons as he goes along. “Nigri fluvio eadem natura, quæ Nilo, calamum & papyrum, & easdem gignit animantes, iisdemque temporibus augescit.[181]” That it has the same soil from which the Nile takes its colour, the water is the same in taste, produces the same reeds, and especially the papyrus; has the same animals in it, such as the crocodile and hippopotamus, and overflows at the same season; this is saying nothing but what may be 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, assert each of them a direct falsehood. The Nubian says, that if the Nile carried all the rains that fall in Abyssinia down into Egypt, the people would not be safe in their houses. To this I answer by a matter of fact, the map of the whole course of the Nile is before the reader; and it is plain from thence, that the whole rain in Abyssinia must now go, and ever has gone down into Egypt, and yet the people are very safe in their houses, and very seldom is the whole land of Egypt compleatly overflowed: and it is by no means less certain from the same inspection, that, unless a river as large as the Nile, constantly full, having its rise in countries subject to perpetual rains, and pouring its stream, which never decreases, into that river, as the Abiad does at Halfaia, all the waters in Abyssinia collected in the Nile would not be sufficient to pass its scanty stream through the burning deserts of Nubia and the Barabra, so as it should be of any utility when arrived in Egypt.

The next falsehood in point of fact is that of the monk Gregory, who says that this left branch of the Nile parts from it, after having passed the kingdom of Dongola into Nubia, after which it runs through Elvah, and so down the desert into the Mediterranean, between the Cyrenaicum and Alexandria. Now, first, we know, from the authority of all antiquity, that there is not a desert more destitute of rivers than that of the Thebaid. This want of water (not the distance) made the voyage to the temple of Jupiter Ammon an enterprise next to desperate, and so worthy of Alexander, who never, however, met a river in his way; had there been there such a stream, there could be no doubt that the banks of it would have been fully as well inhabited as those of the Nile, and the Thebaid consequently no desert. Besides the caravans, which for ages passed between Egypt and Sennaar, must have seen this river, and drunk of it; so must the travellers, in the beginning of this century, Poncet and M. du Roule. They were both at Elvah; and, passing through the dreary deserts of Selima, they must have gone along its side, and crossed it, where it parted from the Nile in their journey to Sennaar. Whereas we know they never saw running water from the time they left the Nile at Siout in Egypt, till they fell in again with it at Moscho, during which period they had nothing but well water, which they carried in skins with them.

The district of Elvah is the Oasis Magna and Oasis Parva of the ancients; large plentiful springs breaking out in the middle of the burning sands, and running constantly without diminution, have invited inhabitants to flock around them. These conducting off the water that spills over the fountain by trenches, the neighbouring lands have quickly produced a plentiful vegetation: gardens and verdure are spread on every side, large groves of palm tree have been planted, and the overflowings of every fountain have produced a little paradise, like so many beautiful and fruitful islands amidst an immense ocean.

The coast of the Mediterranean, from the Cyrenaicum or Ptolemaid (that is, the coast from Bengazi, or Derna, to Alexandria) is well known by the shipping of every nation; but what pilot or passenger ever saw this magnificent watering-place in that desert coast, where this branch of the Nile comes down into the Mediterranean? Besides, the author of this fable betrays his ignorance in the very beginning, where he derives this left branch of the Nile from the principal river, and says, that, after passing the kingdom of Dongola, it enters Nubia. Now, when it entered Dongola it must have already passed Nubia, for Dongola is the capital of the Barabra, every inch of which is to the northward of Nubia. I do not know worse guides in the geography of Africa than Leo Africanus and the Nubian geographer. I believe them both impostors, and the commentators upon them have greatly increased by their own conjectures, the confusion and errors which the text has everywhere occasioned.

As far as I have been ever able to learn, by a very diligent and cautious inquiry, from the inhabitants of the neighbouring countries, I believe the origin of the Niger is in lat. 12° north, and in long. 30° from the meridian of Greenwich nearly; that it is composed of various rivers falling down the sides of very high mountains, called Dyre and Tegla; and runs straight west into the heart of Africa. I conclude also, that this river (though it has abundant supply from every mountain) is very much diminished by evaporation, running in a long course upon the very limits of the tropical rains, when entire, under the name of Senega; or, perhaps, when divided under those of Senega and Gambia, it loses itself in the Atlantic Ocean. I conceive also, that, as Pliny says, it has the same taste and natural productions with the Nile, because it runs in the same climate, and like that river owes, if not its existence, yet certainly its increase and fulness to the same cause, the tropical rains in the northern hemisphere falling from high mountains.

I hope I have now fully exhausted every subject worthy of inquiry as to the place where the fountains of the Nile are situated, also as to its course and various names, the different countries through which it flows, the true cause, and every thing curious attending its inundations; and that as, in old times, Caput Nili Quærere, _to seek the source of the Nile_, was a proverb in use to signify the impossibility of an attempt, it may hereafter be applied, with as much reason, to denote the inutility of any such undertakings.

CHAP. XIX.

_Kind reception among the Agows--Their Number, Trade, Character, &c._

After having given my reader so long, though, I hope, no unentertaining lecture, it is time to go back to Woldo, whom we had left settling our reception with the chief of the village of Geesh. We found the measures taken by this man such as convinced us at once of his capacity and attachment. The miserable Agows, assembled all around him, were too much interested in the appearance we made, not to be exceedingly inquisitive how long our stay was to be among them. They saw, by the horse driven before us, we belonged to Fasil, and suspected, for the same reason, that they were to maintain us, or, in other words, that we should live at discretion upon them as long as we chose to tarry there; but Woldo, with great address, had dispelled these fears almost as soon as they were formed. He informed them of the king’s grant to me of the village of Geesh; that Fasil’s tyranny and avarice would end that day, and another master, like Negadé Ras Georgis, was come to pass a chearful time among them, with a resolution to pay for every labour they were ordered to perform, and purchase all things for ready money: he added, moreover, that no military service was further to be exacted from them, either by the king or governor of Damot, nor from their present master, as he had no enemies. We found these news had circulated with great rapidity, and we met with a hearty welcome upon our arrival at the village.

Woldo had asked a house from the Shum, who very civilly had granted me his own; it was just large enough to serve me, but we were obliged to take possession of four or five others, and we were scarcely settled in these when a servant arrived from Fasil to intimate to the Shum his surrendry of the property and sovereignty of Geesh to me, in consequence of a grant from the king: he brought with him a fine, large, milk-white cow, two sheep, and two goats; the sheep and goats I understood were from Welleta Yasous. Fasil also sent us six jars of hydromel, fifty wheat loaves of very excellent bread, and to this Welleta Yasous had added two middle-sized horns of excellent strong spirits. Our hearts were now perfectly at ease, and we passed a very merry evening. Strates, above all, endeavoured, with many a bumper of the good hydromel of Buré, to subdue the devil which he had swallowed in the inchanted water. Woldo, who had done his part to great perfection, and had reconciled the minds of all the people of the village to us, had a little apprehension for himself; he thought he had lost credit with me, and therefore employed the servant of Ayto Aylo to desire me not to speak of the sash to Fasil’s servant. I assured him, that, as long as I saw him acting properly, as he now did, it was much more probable I should give him another sash on our return, than complain of the means he had used to get this last. This entirely removed all his fears, and indeed as long after as he was with us, he every day deserved more and more our commendations.

Before we went to bed I satisfied Fasil’s servant, who had orders from Welleta Yasous to return immediately; and, as he saw we did not spare the liquor that he brought us, he promised to send a fresh supply as soon as he returned home, which he did not fail to perform the day after.