SOURCES OF THE NILE. 107 



generally admitted that the Bahr ul Abiad was 

 scarcely known to the ancients; at all events it 

 held but a very inferior rank in any account of 

 the rivers of Africa that has been transmitted to 

 our times. I am, therefore, led to believe that 

 the scribe of the sacred treasury of Minerva, who 

 willingly informed Herodotus of what he knew 

 respecting the sources of the Nile, alluded to the 

 two streams of the table land of Abyssinia, the 

 Abi flowing from the north, and the Abiah flowing 

 from the south ; which rivers uniting formed 

 the Assa-abi of ancient days, the Assa-arogue of 

 modern times, and which most certainly was the 

 object of religious worship among the ancient 

 Ethiopians. 



I would not dare to advance an opinion so directly 

 opposed to the apparently well-considered conclu- 

 sions arrived at by previous travellers, but that I 

 am convinced that those which they now advocate 

 have been the result of biassed consultations in the 

 closet, where ingenious, but not travelled, geo- 

 graphers have successfully combated the actual 

 results of information derived upon the spot. 



which was Krophi, of the other Mophi; that from the midst of 

 these two mountains arose the bottomless fountains of the Nile ; 

 one part of its stream ran towards Egypt and the north, the other 

 part towards Ethiopia and the south. But that the fountains were 

 bottomless, he said that Psammeticus, a King of Egypt, had made 

 the experiment ; after having tied ropes of great length and let them 

 down into the fountains, he could not reach the bottom. — Herodotus, 

 book ii. 



