108 ANTONIO FERNANDEZ. 



Krapf, Beke, and Harris, all sent home maps and 

 information, in which the river Gibhee is made 

 to join the Nile, and each have successively given 

 way to subsequent influences. The fact of the 

 Assa-abi, or Assareek, flooding in May, according to 

 the observation of Mr. Inglish, who accompanied 

 the expedition of Mahomed Allee to Senaar, could 

 not be accounted for by Abyssinian travellers 

 without, in fact, leading the Gibbee, or some other 

 large river, to join the Abi, or Brace's Nile, for 

 this latter does not commence to swell before the 

 latter end of June, and could not therefore con- 

 tribute to the rise of the waters of the Assa-abi in 

 May. This was another reason that should have 

 influenced these travellers to adhere to their 

 Abyssinian information, for no argument that could 

 be brought to bear against it could stand for a 

 moment. But, it has been observed, there is 

 the positive testimony of the Father Antonio Fer- 

 nandez, who, in 1615, passed over the Kibbee 

 twice in his journey to Enarea and Zingero. To 

 this I answer, that the historiographer of " The 

 Travels of Jesuits in Abyssinia," F. Balthazer Tellez, 

 so represents it, but not, I think, upon the authority 

 of Fernandez, but merely as an opinion of his own ; 

 but asserted with so much positiveness, that it 

 might readily be supposed part of the information 

 which he derived from Fernandez. Compare what 

 Tellez says in his summary of the rivers of Ethiopia — 

 " There is another celebrated river called Zebee, said 



