THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 5 ^ 



o? the kingdom; this pafs is always occupied to redacc Gon- 

 darto famine. 



The village itfelf belongs to the office of Betwudet, and,, 

 fince that office -has 'been difcontinued, it makes part of the 

 revenue of the Ras ; the language here is Falafha, enough 

 only ufed now by the Jews who go by that name: it was 

 anciently the language of all the province of Dembea, which 

 has here its fouthern boundary. The air of Dingleber is 

 excellent, and the profpedt one of the mofl beautiful in 

 Abyffinia ; on the one fide you have a diftinct view of the 

 lake 1 zana and all its iflands ; on the north, the peninfula 

 of Gorgora, the former refidence of the Jefuits, where too are 

 the ruins of the king's palace. On the north of the lake 

 you have a diftant profpect of Dara, and of the Nile croffing 

 that lake, preferving diitindtly the tract of its ftream un- 

 mixed with the reft of the water, and iffuing out to form 

 what is called the fecond cataract at Alata, all places fixed 

 in our mind by the memory of former diftreffes. On the 

 fouth-eaft, we have a diftant view of the flat country of 

 Maitfha, for the moil part covered with thick trees, and black 

 like a foreft ; farther on the territory of Sacala, one of the 

 di. briefs of the Agows, near which are the fountains of the 

 Nile, the object of all my wiihes ; and clofe behind this, the 

 high mountains of Amid Amid, which furrounded them 

 in two femicircles like a new moon, or amphitheatre, and 

 feem by their lhape to deferve the name of mountains of 

 the moon, fuch as was given by antiquity to mountains, 

 in the neighbourhood of which the Nile was fuppoled tc 

 rife, . 



At 



