382 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



Gondar, by a number of obfervations of the fun and 

 {tars made by day and night, in the courfe of three years, 

 with an agronomical quadrant of three feet radius, and two 

 excellent telefcopes, and by a mean of all their fmall differ- 

 ences, is in lat. 1 2 34' 30" ; and by many obfervations of 

 the fatellites of Jupiter, efpecially the firft, both in their im- 

 merfions and emerfions during that period, I concluded 

 its longitude to be 37 ^^' o' call from the meridian of 

 Greenwich. 



It was the 4th of April 1770, at eight o'clock in the 

 morning, when I fet out from Gondar. V/e palled the Kah- 

 ha, and the Mahometan town, and, about ten in the morn- 

 ing, we came to a confiderable river called the Mogetch, 

 which runs in a deep, rugged bed of flakey blue Hones. We 

 croiled it upon a very iblid, good bridge of four arches, a 

 convenience feldom to be met with in palling Abyffinian ri- 

 vers, but very neceflary on this, as, contrary to moll of their 

 flreams, which become dry, or Hand in pools, on the ap- 

 proach of the fun, the Mogetch runs conftantly, by rca- 

 fon that its fources are in the higheft hills of Wogg^ra, 

 where clouds break plentifully at all feafons of the year. 

 In the rainy months it rolls a prodigious quantity of water 

 into the lake Tzana, "and would be abfolutcly unpayable 

 to people bringing provifion to the market, were it not for 

 this bridge built by Eacilidas ; yet it is not judicioufly pla- 

 ed, being clofc to the mountain's foot, in the face of a tor- 

 rent, where it runs ilrongeil, and carries along with it Hones 

 of a prodigious lize, which luckily, as yet, have injured no 

 part of the bridge. The water of the river Mogeticn is not 

 wholefomc, probably from the minerals, or flony particles 

 at carries along with it, and the flatey ftrata over which it 



1 runs. 



