THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. :- 



The prodigious fragments of coloflal flames of the dog 

 flar, Hill to be feen at Axum, fumciently iliew what a ma 

 terial object of their attention they confidered him to be ; 

 and Seir, which in the language of the Troglodytes, 

 in that of the low country of Meroe, exactly correfpo- 

 to it, fignifies a dog, inftructs us in the reafon why 

 province was called Sire, and the large river which bo^ 

 it, Siris. 



I apprehend the reafon why, without forfakin 

 ancient domiciles in the mountains, they chofe this 

 tion for another city, Meroe, was owing to an imperfection 

 they had difcovered (both in Sire and in their caves below 

 it) to refult from their climate. They were within the 

 tropical rains ; and, confequently, were impeded and inter- 

 rupted in the neceffary obfervations of the heavenly bodies, 

 and the progrefs of aftronomy which they fo warmly culti- 

 vated. They mull have feen, likewife, a neceffity of building 

 Meroe' farther from them than perhaps they wiihed, for the 

 fame reafon they built Axum in the high country of Abyf- 

 firiia in order to avoid the fly (a phenomenon of which I 

 mall afterwards fpeak) which purfued them everywhere 

 within the limits of the rains, and which mufl have given 

 an abfolute law in thofc iiiTc times to the regulations of 

 the Cufhitc fettlements. They therefore went the length 

 of lat. 1 6°, where I faw the ruins mppofed to be thofe of 

 Meroe*, and caves in the mountains immediately above that 

 fituation, which I cannot doubt were the temporary habita- 

 tion of the builders of that firft feminary of learning. 



i B 2 It 



* At Gerri in my return through the defert. 



