100 Dr. Beke on the Sources of the Nile. 



as far as the country of Barl in 4° N. lat., 500 miles above 

 the confluence of the Sobat or River of Habesh ; and still 

 the head of the Nile is there said to be distant a month's 

 journey further to the south. 



In the absence, then, of unanimity among the people of the 

 countries watered by the several branches of the Nile, who each 

 regard, not unnaturally, their own particular river as the prin- 

 cipal stream ; it is manifest that the question is an open one, 

 and that its solution must be attempted on general and scien- 

 tific principles. 



When we trace the course of a river, from its mouth up- 

 wards, to the furthest extremity of each of its several tributaries, 

 we arrive ultin)ately at a point where the waters no longer 

 flow towards that river, but take their course in the opposite 

 direction. This is called in Latin divortia aquarum — the 

 parting (or flowing in contrary directions) of the waters — and 

 in German die Wasserscheide, which means the same. Englisfi 

 geographers have of late years adopted, through the geologists, 

 the expression watershed, which is evidently a mere corruption 

 of the German Wasserscheide, and was probably first brought 

 into use among us by miners from Germany. But such an 

 expression is objectionable; as to the mere English scholar it 

 would seem to be a native compound of the words iscater and 

 shed, and hence might give rise to the idea of a river's basin 

 being intended rather than the division between two adjoining 

 basins. The word waterparting is far preferable. For it is a 

 literal English translation of the Latin divortia aqtiarum and 

 of the German Wasserscheide ; it expresses the true sense, and 

 it is not susceptible of ambiguity. 



The waterparting between the basins of two rivers is not 

 necessarily coincident with a mountain -chain, or identical 

 with it. On the contrary, we have instances of a river's pass- 

 ing through a mountain-chain, and taking its rise in an ex- 

 tensive elevated plain, so level in appearance as to render it 

 difficult, at first sight, to determine in which direction the 

 waters flow, or ought to flow. But though the waterparting 

 may not be identical with an abnormal elevation, such as a 

 mountain-chain, it must, in the nature of things, be the great- 

 est normal elevation : it must be that point — or rather that line 

 or series of points — at which the waters from the heavens, no 

 longer continuing to find a passage in the one direction, seek 

 it in another. Thus the waterparting forms the extreme 

 limits of the basin of a river, and the boundary-line between 

 the several distinct hydrographical systems of which a conti- 

 nent is composed. 



The sources of the Nile, then, are all those head- streams 



