6i6 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



Athanasius Kircher, a Jefuit,well known for his exten- 

 sive learning and voluminous writings, and ftill more for 

 the rafhnefs with which he advances the mofl improbable 

 facts in natural hiftory, is the man that firft publifhed an 

 account of the fountains of the Nile, and, as he fays, from 

 this journal left by Peter Paez. 



I must, however, here ohferve, that no relation of this 

 kind was to be found in three copies of Peter Paez's hiftory, 

 to which 1 had accefs when in Italy, on my return home. 

 One of thefe copies I faw at Milan, and, by the intereft of 

 friends, had an opportunity of perufmg it at my leifure. 

 The other two were at Bologna and Rome. I ran through 

 them rapidly, attending only to the place where the descrip- 

 tion ought to have been, and where I did not find it ; but 

 having copied the iirft and laft page of the Milan manu- 

 fcript, and comparing them with thefe two laft mentioned, 

 I found that all the three were, word for word, the fame, 

 and none of them contained one fyllable of the difcovery of 

 the fource. 



However this be, I do not think it is right for me to pro- 

 nounce thus much, unlefs I bring collateral proofs to 

 nrengthen my opinion, and to fhew that no fuch excurfion 

 •was ever pretended to have been made by that miflionary, in 

 any of his works, unlefs that which palled through the hand 

 of Kircher. 



Alphonso Mendes came into AbyiTmia about a year af- 

 ter Paez's death. New and delireable as that difcovery mull 

 have been tohimfelf, to the pope, king of Spain, and all his 

 •great patrons in Portugal and Italy, though he wrote the 



hiftory 



