622 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



It is not cafy to conceive what fpecies of information 

 Paez intends to convey to us by the obfervation he makes 

 lower, " That the water, which found way at the foot of 

 the mountain, did not flow at the top of it." It would have 

 been very lingular if it had ; and I fully believe that a 

 mountain voiding the water at its top, when it had free ac- 

 cefs to run out at its bottom, would have been one of the 

 raoft curious things the two Jefuits could ever have feen 

 in any voyage. But what mountain is it he is fpeaking of? 

 he has never named any one, but has faid the Nile was fi- 

 tuated in the higheft part of a plain. I cannot think he 

 means by this that the higheft part of a plain is a moun- 

 tain ; if he does, it is a fpecies of defcription which would 

 need an interpreter. He fays again, the mountain is full 

 of water, and trembles ; and that there is a village below 

 the top of the mountain, on the mountain itfelf. This I ne- 

 ver faw ; they mult have cold and llippery quarters in that 

 mountain, or whatever it is ; and if he means the moun- 

 tain of Geelh, there is not a village within a quarter a mile 

 of it. The village of Geelh is in the middle of a high clilF, 

 dcicending into the plain of Allioa. The bottom of that 

 cliff or plain is 30c feet, as I have already faid, below the 

 bale of the mountain of Geelh, and the place where the 

 fountains rife. 



Paez next fays, that it is three miles from that village 

 of Geelh to the fountains of the Nile. Now, as my quadrant 

 was placed in my tent, on the brink of the cliff of Geelh, 

 it wa$ necefiary for me to meafure thatdiftance ; and by al- 

 lowing for it to reduce my obfervations to the exact fpot 

 where the fources rofe, I did accordingly with a chain 

 4 rneafure 



