1844.] Notice of the Ajaib-al- Mukhlukat. 655 



falling when this pressure is taken off by the commencement of the 

 Southerly winds, is also alluded to.* 



Among other rivers described by the author are the Euphrates, the 

 Oxus, the Indus, the Ganges. The latter is said by the Hindus to 

 flow from heaven : and when the great men of those regions die, their 

 remains are burned and the ashes thrown into the river, which convey 

 them to heaven. t Some of the water of the Ganges is conveyed daily 

 to the temple of Somnath, which is 200 parasangs distant. (Calculating 

 at the rate of three miles per parasang, Somnath is 600 miles distant 

 from the Ganges.) 



The next fas I treats of the origin of 



Springs, (Fi-tawallud-al-Ayun, ^^jdSsH^S^j) 

 which the author divides into sweet, azab, , )t > £ J ; saline, (maleh, 



X* ); stinking, ( i £ of an) ; sulphureous, (kilriti, £xyj&)\ bitumin- 

 ous or napthiferous, (naphti, tai)) ; and those producing borax, borak, 

 (j,jy* % . These substances are supposed to be generated by heat. Among 

 the celebrated springs, the author enumerates the sulphur springs of 

 Bamian, the spiings of Tiberias, &c. In the next fasl on wells, those 

 of Zemzem in Arabia, (the well into which Joseph was cast.) 



The succeeding chapters treat of the animal, vegetable and mineral 

 kingdoms, all compounds of the four elements. The author divides them 

 into two classes, nami, ^U and ghair nami, ^iJL^c ; viz. bodies having 



* Some believed that the inundations were caused by the northerly winds driving 

 back the waters of the Nile themselves : others, that the clouds which traverse 

 Egypt, wafted over its surface by the North winds, were collected, and descend in tor- 

 rents down the steeps of Ethiopia into its channel. 



The Nile, however, like all other rivers that rise near the equator, commences to 

 increase in the most Southerly portions of its course before the summer solstice. 

 Owing to the very slight inclination of its bed, in Egypt only two inches per mile, 

 a considerable [time elapses before the freshes from Abyssinia reach Lower Egypt, the 

 velocity of the stream rarely exceeding three miles per hour. At Thebes, in Upper 

 Egypt, on the 18th June 1840, 1 witnessed the first appearance of the great annual 

 inundation in the Nile ; viz. a slight milky turbidness of the water. This phenomenon 

 is called by the Arabs Nuktah, g^sij wn i ca signifies a dot or a stain, but is also ap- 

 plied by the Egyptians to a dew, which is supposed to fall during the night of the 

 17th June, or the 11th of the Coptic month Bauneh or Pyni. The commencement of 

 the rise of the Nile, though arbitrarily fixed by them to this day, is quite uncertain 

 to a week or two. 



t A little against the stream it must be confessed. 



