raging for want of sustenance. Yet if they who endeavoured
with so much ardour to discover the spring of this river had landed at
Mazna on the coast of the Red Sea, and marched a little more to the south
than the south-west, they might perhaps have gratified their curiosity at
less expense, and in about twenty days might have enjoyed the desired
sight of the sources of the Nile.

But this discovery was reserved for the invincible bravery of our noble
countrymen, who, not discouraged by the dangers of a navigation in seas
never explored before, have subdued kingdoms and empires where the Greek
and Roman greatness, where the names of Caesar and Alexander, were never
heard of; who have demolished the airy fabrics of renowned hypotheses,
and detected those fables which the ancients rather chose to invent of
the sources of the Nile than to confess their ignorance. I cannot help
suspending my narration to reflect a little on the ridiculous
speculations of those swelling philosophers, whose arrogance would
prescribe laws to nature, and subject those astonishing effects, which we
behold daily, to their idle reasonings and chimerical rules. Presumptuous
imagination! that has given being to such numbers of books, and patrons
to so many various opinions about the overflows of the Nile. Some of
these theorists have been pleased to declare it as their favourite notion
that this inundation is caused by high winds which stop the current, and
so force the water to rise above its banks, and spread over all Egypt.
Others pretend a subterraneous communication between the ocean and the
Nile, and that the sea being violently agitated swells the river. Many
have imagined themselves blessed with the discovery when they have told
us that this mighty flood proceeds from the melting of snow on the
mountains of AEthiopia, without reflecting that this opinion is contrary
to the received notion of all the ancients, who believed that the heat
was so excessive between the tropics that no inhabitant could live there.
So much snow and so great heat are never met with in the same region; and
indeed I never saw snow in Abyssinia, except on Mount Semen in the
kingdom of Tigre, very remote from the Nile, and on Namera, which is
indeed not far distant, but where there never falls snow sufficient to
wet the foot of the mountain when it is melted.

To the immense labours and fatigues of the Portuguese mankind is indebted
for the knowledge of the real ca