lO* Dr. Beke on the Sources of the Nile. 



my own personal experience. In August 1842, when at the 

 town of Yaush in Godjam, 1 obtained a good deal of valuable 

 information respecting the countries lying to the east of the 

 Abai and to the north of Shoa, from an intelligent Christian 

 Abessinian merchant named Negaderas* Fanta, who traded 

 between the market of Baso in Godjam and those of Warra- 

 hemano and Warrakallu in Eastern Abessinia. 



On my inquiring of Fanta as to the course of the Milli and 

 Berkonna, two rivers of Eastern Abessinia both tributary to 

 the Hawash, he answered that he knew them well, and that they 

 joined the Abai. As I was well-aware that this was not and 

 could not be the case, I began to fear that all the other informa- 

 tion with which my friend had been supplying me might be of 

 a similar character. But a little explanation showed me that 

 he was quite right — that is to say, according to his own laay of 

 thinking and speaking. On my expressing myself doubtingly 

 as to the correctness of his assertion, he at once appealed to my' 

 selfsLS an eye-witness of the fact. " Do you not say (asked he) 

 that you came to Shoa by the way of the Adal country?" I 

 admitted that I did. " Consequently you crossed the Hawash, 

 into which river the Milli and Berkonna flow." This, too, I 

 could not deny. " The Hawash, after passing between Adal 

 and Shoa, runs round to the south of the latter country, be- 

 tween it and Guragie. Does it not ?" As I now began to con- 

 ceive Fanta's meaning, I did not think it worth while to dispute 

 the correctness of this assertion ; though 1 knew the fact to be 

 thatthecourseofthe river in question is/zo/^z and not/o the south. 

 " Well, then, the Hawash joins the Muger, the confluence of 

 which river with the Abai you have seen with your own eyes, 

 if I mistake not." This last was true enough. And so the good 

 man, Fanta, by merely making the Hawash run the wrong 

 way, and regarding the Muger as the continuation of it, because 

 the two rivers have some of their sowces ifi close contiguity on 

 Mount Saldla, succeeded in demonstrating, to his own if not 

 to my entire satisfaction, that the Milli joins the Abai ! The 

 alleged communication between the Kwara or Niger and the 

 Nile, is doubtless to be understood in a similar manner; the 

 sources of the eastern arm of the former and those of the west- 

 ern arm of the latter being at the waterparting between the 

 respective basins of the two rivers, and thus "communicating 

 with one another," according to the ordinary African phrase- 

 ology. 



* Negaderas means literally the head (ras) of the merchants (negade), equi- 

 valent perhaps in its primary application and value to the Console de' Mer- 

 canti of the Levant — whence our modern title of consul is derived. But 

 it is now given as a complimentary appellation to most traders of standing. 



