. 
“ 
THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 563 
_ I may add jeffamin (called Leham) which becomes a large 
tree; but all the reft of the birds or flowers may be con- 
fidered as liable to the general obfervation, that the flowers 
are deftitute of odour, and the birds of fong. 
Arter pafling the Affar, and feveral villages belonging 
to Goutto, our courfe being S. E. we had, for the firft time, a 
difting: view of the high mountain of Geeth, the long-wifhed- 
for end of our dangerous and troublefome journey. Under 
this mountain are the fountains of the Nile; it bore from us 
S. E. by S. about thirty miles, as nearas we could conjecture, 
in a ftraight line, without countin g the deviations or crook- 
ednefs of the road. 
Ever fince we had paffed the Affar we had been defcend- 
ing gently through very uneven ground, covered thick with 
trees, and torn up by the eullies and courfes of torrents. 
At two o’clock in the afternoon of the fecond of November 
we came to the banks of the Nile; the paflage is very difii-. 
cult and dangerous, the bottom being full of holes made by 
confiderable fprings, light finking fand, and, at every little 
diftance, large rocky ftones; the eaftern fide was muddy and 
full of pits, the ground of clay: the Nile here is about 260 
feet broad, and very rapid; its depth about four feet in the 
middle of the river, and the fides not above two. Its banks 
are of a very gentle, eafy defcent; the wettern fide is chief- 
ly ornamented with high trees of the falix, or willow tribe, 
growing ftraight, without joints or knots, and bearing long 
pointed pods full of a kind of cotton, ‘This tree is called, 
in their language, Ha; the ufe they have for it is to make 
charcoal for the compofition ‘of gunpowder; but on the 
eaftern fide, the banks, to a confiderable diflance from the 
Wa. iL 4B’ 2 rive 
