THE EARTH. 83 



ca. inundation were equally unknown. They have both bebd ascer 

 tained by the missionaries who have travelled into the interior parti 

 of Ethiopia. The Nile takes its rise in the kingdom of Gojam,* 

 from a small aperture on the top of a mountain, which, though not 

 above a foot and a half over, yet was unfathomable. This fountain, 

 when arrived at the foot of the mountain, expands into a river ; 

 and being joined by others, forms a lake thirty leagues long, and as* 

 many broad ; from this, its channel, in some measure, winds back to 

 the country where it first began ; from thence, precipitating by fright- 

 ful cataracts, it travels through a variety of desert regions, equally 

 formidable, such as Amhara, Olaca, Damot, and Xaoa. Upon its ar- 

 rival in the kingdom of Upper Egypt, it runs through a rocky chan- 

 nel, which some late travellers have mistaken for its cataracts. In 

 the beginning of its course, it receives many lesser rivers into it ; and 

 Pliny was mistaken, in saying that it received none. In the begin- 

 ning also of its course, it has many windings ; but, for above three 

 hundred leagues from the sea, it runs in a direct line. Its annual 

 overflowings arise from a very obvious cause, which is almost universal 

 with the great rivers that take their source near the line. The rainy 

 season, which is periodical in those climates, floods the rivers ; and 

 as this always happens in our summer, so the Nile is at that time over- 

 flown. From these inundations, the inhabitants of Egypt derive hap- 

 piness and plenty ; and, when the river does not arise to its accus- 

 tomed heights, they prepare for an indifferent harvest. It begins to 

 overflow about the seventeenth of June; it generally continues to 

 augment for forty days, and decreases in about as many more. The 

 time of increase and decrease, however, is much more inconsiderable 

 now than it was among the ancients. Herodotus informs us, that it 

 was a hundred days rising, and as many falling ; which shows that the 

 inundation was much greater at that time than at present. Mr. Buf- 

 font has ascribed the present diminution, as well to the lessening of 

 the Mountains of the Moon, by their substance having so long been 

 washed down with the stream, as to the rising of the earth in Egypt, 

 that has for so many ages received this extraneous supply. But we 

 do not find, by the buildings that have remained since the times of the 

 ancients, that the earth is much raised since then. Besides the Nile 

 in Africa, we may reckon the Zara, and the Coanza, from the great- 

 ness of whose openings into the sea, and the rapidity of whose streams, 

 we form an estimate of the great distance from whence they come. 

 Their courses, however, are spent in watering deserts and savage 

 countries, whose poverty or fierceness have kept strangers away. 



But of all parts of the world, America, as it exhibits the most lofty 

 mountains, so also it supplies the largest rivers. The foremost of 

 these is the great river Amazon, which, from its source in the lake of 

 Lauricocha, to its discharge into the Western Ocean, performs a 

 rourse of more than twelve hundred leagues.^ The breadth and depth 

 of this river are answerable to Its vast length ; and, where its width is 

 most contracted, its depth is augmented in proportion. So great is 

 die body of its waters, that other rivers, though before the objects of 



* Kircher Mundt. Subt. vol. ii. p. 72. f Buffon, vol. ii. p. 82. J Ulloa, v"l. 1. p. 383 



