THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 627 



part of them. But, with Vomu.= .s leave, this is a fpecies of 

 intemperate ill-founded criticifm ; neither Kircher, nor Paez, 

 nor whoever was author of that work, ever faid they in- 

 nructed the emperor about the place in his dominions where 

 the Nile arofe, as what he fays is only that the Agows or 

 Geefh reported that the mountain trembled in dry weather, 

 and had done fo that year, when the emperor, who was 

 prefent, confirmed the Agow's report: this is not faying that 

 Peter Paez told the emperor encamped with his army upon 

 the fountains, that the Nile rofe in his dominions, and that 

 this was the fource. Wo be to the works of Scaliger, Bo- 

 chart, or Voffius, when they mail, in their turn, be fubmitted 

 to fuch criticifm as this. 



A Protestant million was the next, that I know of at 

 leaft, which fucceeded that of the Portuguefe, and confided 

 only of one traveller, Peter Heyling, of Lubec ; although 

 he lived in the country, nay, governed it feveral years, he 

 never attempted to vifit the fource of that river ; he had de- 

 dicated himfelf to a ftudious and folitary life, having, a- 

 mong other parts of his reading, a very competent know- 

 ledge of Roman, or civil law ; he is laid to have given a 

 great deal of his time to the compiling an inftitute of that 

 law in the Abyffinian language for the ufe of that nation, 

 upon a plan he had brought from Germany; but he did not 

 Jive to finifh it, though that and two other books, written in 

 Geez, flill exiit in private hands in Abyninia, at lead I have 

 "been often confidently told fo. 



The next and lad attempt I fliall take notice of, and one 

 of the moft extraordinary that ever was made for the dif- 

 covery of the Nile, was that of a German nobleman, Peter 



4 K 2 Jofeph 



