648 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER | 
hollows, or in any thing that can. imprifon and detain it. | 
This is the fine pout of Sennaar, salle Hibbar | 
Tue Nile now runs tote by ea eeot ie a direction near- 
ly north and fouth; it then turns fharply toward the eaft, 
is brim-full and vaftly pleafant in the fair feafon, being in- 
deed the only ornament of this bare and flat, though cul- 
tivated country. From Sennaar it paffes many lar ge towns ~ 
inhabited by Arabs, all of them white people. The Nile 
then paffes Gerri, and runs N. E. to join the Tacazze, pafling 
in its way a large and populous town called Chendi, pro- 
bably the ancient metropolis of Candace *, 
Ir we are not to reject entirely the authority of ancient 
hiftory, the ifland of Meroé, fo famous in the firft ages, muft 
be found fomewhere between the fource of the Nile and this 
point, where the two rivers unite; for of the Nile we are 
certain, and it feems very clear that the Atbara is the Afta- 
boras of the ancients. Pliny + fays, it is the ftream which 
inclofes the left fide of Meroé as the Nile does the right; and 
we muft confider him to be looking fouthward from Alex- 
andria, when he ufes the otherwife eoneeca terms of right 
-and left, and, after this junction of thefe two rivers, the Nile 
receives or unites itfelf with no other till it falls into | the 
fea at Alexandria. 
Mucu inquiry has been made about this ifland, once a 
moft diflinguifhed fpot on our globe, the cradle of fcience 
and 
» 
~ * Called in the Ethiopic annals Hendagué ; wrote originally, I fuppofe, with an X or Cz, | 
t Lib. v. cap. 9. Nat. Hitt. 
