THESOURCEOFTHENILE. 691 



told to Omar, he ordered the new Milometer to be demolifli- 

 ed ; but as it had been part of the complaint to him, that 

 their counting the divifions of the Mikeas * was the reafon 

 why the people were kept in continual terror, he fhut up 

 the accefs to Chriilians, and that prohibition continues in 

 Cairo to this day ; and, inftead of permitting ocular infpec- 

 tion, he ordered the daily increafe to be proclaimed, but in 

 a manner fo unintelligible, that the Egyptians in general no 

 longer underttood it, nor do they underftand it now; for, be- 

 ginning at a given point, which was not the bottom of the 

 Nilometer, he went on, telling the increafe by fubtra&ing 

 from the upper divifion; fo that as nobody knew the lower 

 point from which he began, although they might compre- 

 hend how much it had rifen fince the crier proclaimed its 

 increafe, yet they never could know the height of the water 

 that was in the Nilometer when the proclamation began, 

 nor what the divifion was to which it had afcended on the 

 pillar. 



To underftand this, let us premife, that, on the point of 

 the ifland Rhoda, between Geeza and Cairo, near the middle 

 of the river, but nearer to Geeza, is a round tower, and in 

 that an apartment, in the middle of which is a very neat 

 well, or ciftern, lined with marble, to which the Nile has 

 free accefs, through a large opening like an embrafure, the 

 bottom of the well being on the fame level with the bottom 

 of the river. In the middle of this well rifes a thin column, 

 as far as I can remember, of eight faces of blue and white 

 marble, to the foot of which, if you are permitted to defcend, 



4 S 2 you 



Oi Nilometer. 



