616 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 
ATHANASIUS Kircuer, a Jefuit, well known for his exten- 
five learning and voluminous writings, and ftill more for 
the rafhnefs with which he advances the moft improbable 
facts in natural hiftory, is the man that firft publifhed an 
account of the fountains of the Nile, and, as he fays, from 
this journal left by Peter Paez. 
I must, however, here obferve, that no relation of this 
kind was to be found in three copies of Peter Paez’s hiftory, 
to which I had accefs when in Italy,.on my return home. 
One of thefe copies [-faw at Milan, and, by the intereft of 
friends, had an opportunity of perufing it at my leifure. 
The other two were at Bologna and Rome. I ran through 
them rapidly, attending only te the place where the defcrip- 
tion ought to have been, and where I did not find it; but 
having copied the firft-and laft page of the Milan manu- 
{cript, and comparing them with thefe two laft mentioned, 
I found that all the three were, word for word, the fame, 
and none of them contained one fyllable of the difcovery of 
: the fource. 
However this be,I do not think it is right for me to pro- 
nounce thus much, unlefs I bring collateral proofs to 
ftrengthen my opinion, and to fhew that no fuch excurfion 
avas ever pretended to have been made bythat miffionary, in 
any of ‘his works, unlefs that which paffed through the hand 
of Kircher, 
ALPHONSO MENDES came into Abyffinia about a year af- 
ter Paez’s death. New and defireable as that difcovery muft 
have been to himielf, to the pope, king of Spain, and all his 
great patrons in Portugal and Italy, though he wrote the 
hiftory © 
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