THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 605 



mined by the inveftigation of the caufe, and the obferva- 

 tions of a feries of years. Before this was thoroughly fet- 

 tled and known, the farmer might perhaps cultivate the 

 plain of Egypt, but would not build there ; he would fix his 

 dwelling on the mountain in defiance of the flood; and that 

 this was fo, is evident from what we faw at Thebes, which 

 the Aborigines did not build, as we fee thoufands of caves 

 dug out of folid rock that were the dwellings of the firft 

 inhabicants, the Troglodytes, beyond Meroe. 



The philofophers of Meroe feem therefore to have been 

 the firft that undertook the compiling a feries of obferva- 

 tions, which fhould teach their pofterity the proper times 

 in which they could fettle in, and cultivate Egypt, without 

 fear of danger from the Nile, That illand, full of flocks 

 and fhepherds, under a fky perpetually cloudlefs, having a 

 twilight of fliort duration, was placed between the Nile and 

 Aftaboras, where the two rivers collect the waters that fad 

 in the eaft and the weft of Ethiopia, and mix together in a 

 latitude where the tropical rains ceafe ; this land was too 

 high to be overflowed by the Nile, but near enough to be- 

 hold every alteration in that river's increafe from the in. 

 ftant it happened. 



Sirous, the blighted ftar in the Heavens, probably the 

 large ;1, perhaps the neareft to us, in either cafe the mod ob- 

 vious and ufeful for the prefent purpofe, was immediately 

 vertical to Meroe ; and it did not long efcape obiervation, 

 that the heliacal rifing of the dog-ftar was found to be the 

 inftant when ail Egypt was to prepare for the reception of 

 a itranger-flood, without which the hufbandman's labour 

 and expectation of liarveft were in vain. The fields were 



dufty 



