RIVERS. 295 



however, who soared in many respects above the prejudices of his age concerning the 

 natural world, assigned it to a proper cause ; though he ascribes too much influence to 

 the Etesian wind, and shows his imperfect acquaintance with the geography of the globe, 

 by supposing the occurrence without a parallel. 



" The Nile now calls us, pride of Egypt's plains : 

 Sole stream on earth its boundaries that o'erflows 

 Punctual, and scatters plenty. When the year 

 Now glows with perfect summer, leaps its tide 

 Proud o'er the champaign ; for the north wind, now 

 Th' Etesian breeze, against its mouth direct 

 Blows with perpetual winnow ; every surge 

 Hence loiters slow, the total current swells, 

 And wave o'er wave its loftiest bank surmounts. 

 For that the fix'd monsoon that now prevails 

 Flows from the cold stars of the northern pole, 

 None e'er can doubt ; while rolls the Nile adverse 

 Full from the south, from realms of torrid heat, 

 Haunts of the Ethiop tribes ; yet far beyond 

 First bubbling, distant, o'er the burning line. 



Then ocean, haply, by th' undevious breeze 

 Blown up the channel, heaves with every wave 

 Heaps of high sand, and dams its wonted course ; 

 Whence, narrower, too, its exit to the main, 

 And with less force the tardy stream descends. 



Or, towards its fountain, ampler rains, perchance, 

 Fall, as th' Etesian fans, now wide unfurl'd, 

 Ply the big clouds perpetual from the north 

 Full o'er the red equator ; where condensed, 

 Ponderous and low, against the hills they strike, 

 And shed their treasures o'er the rising flood. 

 Or, from the Ethiop -mountains, the bright sun 

 Now full matur'd with deep-dissolving ray 

 May melt th' agglomerate snows, and down the plains 

 Drive them, augmenting hence, th' incipient stream." 



The annual overflow of the Nile is now well known to proceed from the heavy 

 periodical rains within the tropics. They fall in copious torrents upon the great plateau 

 of Abyssinia, which rises, like a fortress, 6000 feet above the burning plains with which 

 it is surrounded on every side, attracting the clouds, cold fogs, and tremendous showers, 

 enveloping An Rober, the capital, while, whenever the curtain of mist is withdrawn, the f 

 strange contrast is presented of the sulphureous plains, visible below, where the heat is 

 90, and the drought excessive. A peculiar character has been given to this district 

 by the violence of the periodical rains. Bruce speaks of the mountains of this table- 

 land, not remarkable for their height, but for their number and uncommon forms. 

 " Some of them are flat, thin, and square, in shape of a hearth-stone or slab, that 

 scarce would seem to have base sufficient to resist the winds. Some are like pyramids, 

 others like obelisks or prisms, and some, the most extraordinary of all, pyramids 

 pitched upon their points, with their base uppermost." Mr. Salt confirms this delinea- 

 tion in the main. The peculiar shapes referred to have been formed by the action 

 of the torrents discharged from the clouds, which have, for ages, been skeletonising 

 the country, dismantling the granite with its kindred masses of the softer deposits, 

 gradually wearing away also these harder rocks, and carrying along the soil of Ethiopia, 

 strewing it upon the valley of the Nile, to the shores of the Mediterranean. When 

 Bruce was ascending Taranta, a sudden noise was heard on the heights louder than the 



