544- TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



But had the centurions gone to Gojam, they would have 

 pafled a hundred miles of a more verdanc and nioie beauti- 

 ful country before arriving there. The pfittaci aves, or the 

 paroquets, which they very properly obferved were firft feen 

 in Meroe, that is, in Atbara, would have been fought for in 

 vain in Gojam, a cold country ; whereas the paroquet's de- 

 light is in the low, or hot country, where there is always va- 

 riety of fruit ; neither could Ptolemy's obfervation, nor thofe 

 two juft mentioned by Pliny, be admitted, after any fort of 

 jjnodiiication wliatever. 



Strabo remarks of the fituatlon of Meroe, that it was 

 placed upon the verge of the tropical rains ; and, with his 

 ufual accuracy and good fenfe, he wonders the regularity 

 of thefe tropical rains, as .to their coming and duration, was 

 not known earlier, when fo many occafions had offered to 

 obferve them at Meroe before his time. The fame author 

 fays, that the fun is vertical at Meroe forty-five days before 

 the fummer folftice ; fo that this too will place that ifland 

 in lat. 16" 44', very little different from the latitude that 

 Ptolemy gives it. From all which circumflances we may 

 venture to maintain, that very few places in ancient geo- 

 graphy have their fituations more flric^ly defined, or by a 

 greater variety of circumflances, than the ifland of Atbara or 

 Meroe. But fuppofing the cafe v/ere otherwife, there is not 

 one of thefe circumflances that I know of, that could be ad- 

 duced with any efFccl to prove Gojam to be Meroe, as Le 

 Grande and the Jefuits have» vainly afTerted. 



At half pail eleven o'clock in the forenoon of the 21ft 



•of October, having fpcnt the whole day in winding through 



:vallies, and the bare hills of the Acaba, we alighted in a 



ji wood 



