in the Mountains of the Moon. 247 



Ethiopia above Egypt was known in the latter country ; inas- 

 much as the historian Herodotus relates,* that he was in- 

 formed by a priest of Sais that the sources of the Nile were 

 situate in certain mountains, whence two streams flowed, tlie 

 one taking its course to the north and dividing Egypt, and 

 the other running to the south through Ethiopia. 



From the further statement which the historian says was 

 made to him, that these mountains were situate between 

 Syene and Elephantine, it is manifest that some gross mis- 

 understanding existed somewhere on the subject. It is not 

 improbable that the ambiguous description given by the 

 priest of Sais, though it spoke substantially the truth, was 

 intended to conceal the precise circumstances connected 

 with the origin of the sacred river ; and it may even be con- 

 jectured that the latter portion of his information, when 

 dragged from him, was intended to mislead. However this 

 may have been, the context shows that the matter-of-fact 

 traveller and historian did not place implicit confidence in 

 the statements of his priestly informer, and that he took the 

 trouble to go in person as far as Elephantine, for the pur- 

 pose of obtaining more pi'ecise information on a subject which 

 so much interested him.t There he learned that " the source 

 of the Nile is in the west" and that this river " rises in Libya, 

 which country it divides. "J 



Contradictory as this latter information may at first sight 

 seem, it is not so in reality. Till very recently it was im- 

 possible to explain it satisfactorily ; but we now know that, 

 in about 9° 20' N. lat., the direct stream of the Bahr el Abyad 

 is not only joined by the Sobat, Telfi, or river of Habesh, 

 which we have identified with Ptolemy's second arm of the 

 Nile, and which falls into it from the east; but it also re- 

 ceives, /row the west, the Bahr el Ghazal or Keilah, which is 

 described as a magnificent river, with a tolerably rapid cur- 

 rent. § 



At the conclusion of my Essay on the Nile and its Tribu- 



* Euterpe, xxviii. t I^uL, xxix. 



X Ibid., xxxi., et leq. § .See page 226. 



