RIVERS. 



295 



however, who soared in many respects above the prejudices of his age concerning the 

 natural world, assigned it to a proper cause ; though he wrongly ascribes influence to 

 the Etesian wind, and shows his imperfect acquaintance with the geography of the globe, 

 by supposing the occurrence without a parallel. 



" The Nile now calls us, pride of Egypt's plains : 



Sole stream on earth its boundaries that o'erflows 



Punctual, and scatters plenty. When the year 



Now glows with perfect summer, leaps its tide 



Proud o'er the champaign ; for the north wind, no\v 



Th' Etesian breeze, against its mouth direct 



Blows with perpetual winnow ; every surge 



Hence loiters slow, the total current swells, 



And wave o'er wave its loftiest bank surmounts. 



For that the fix'd monsoon that now prevails 



Flows from the cold stars of the northern pole, 



None e'er can doubt ; while rolls the Nile adverse 



Full from the south, from realms of torrid heat, 



Haunts of the Ethiop tribes ; yet far beyond 



First bubbling, distant, o'er the burning line. 

 Then ocean, haply, by th' undevious breeze 



Blown up the channel, heaves with every wave 



Heaps of high sand, and dams its wonted course ; 



Whence, narrower, too, its exit to the main, 



And with less force the tardy stream descends. 

 Or, towards its fountain, ampler rains, perchance, 



Fall, as th' Etesian fans, now wide unfurl'd, 



Ply the big clouds perpetual from the north 



Full o'er the red equator ; where condensed, 



Ponderous and low, against the hills they strike, 



And shed their treasures o'er the rising flood. 



Or, from the Ethiop -mountains, the bright sun 



Now full matur'd with deep-dissolving ray 



May melt th' agglomerate snows, and down the plains 



Drive them, augmenting hence, th' incipient stream." 



The annual overflow of the Nile is now well known to proceed from the heavy 

 periodical rains within the tropics. They fall in copious torrents upon the great plateau 

 of Abyssinia, which rises, like a fortress, 6000 feet above the burning plains with which 

 it is surrounded. The vapours, arrested and condensed by this highland rampart, often 

 densely shroud Ankobar, the capital, while, whenever the curtain of mist is withdrawn, 

 the strange contrast is presented of the sulphureous plains, visible below, where the heat is 

 90, and the drought excessive. A peculiar character has been given to this district 

 by the violence of the periodical rains. Bruce speaks of the mountains of this table 

 land, not remarkable for their height, but for their number and uncommon forms. 

 " Some of them are flat, thin, and square, in shape of a hearth-stone or slab, that 

 scarce would seem to have base sufficient to resist the winds. Some are like pyramids, 

 others like obelisks or prisms, and some, the most extraordinary of all, pyramids 

 pitched upon their points, with their base uppermost." Mr. Salt confirms this delinea 

 tion in the main. The peculiar shapes referred to have been formed by the action 

 of the torrents discharged from the clouds, which have, for ages, been skeletonising 

 the country, dismantling the granite with its kindred masses of the softer deposits, 

 gradually wearing away also these harder rocks, and carrying along the soil of Ethiopia, 

 strewing it upon the valley of the Nile, to the shores of the Mediterranean. When 

 Bruce was ascending Taranta, a sudden noise was heard on the heights louder than the 



