664, TRAVELS TO DISCOVER. 
-that it contributed to the health of the people and the fer- 
‘tility of the land. It puts me in mind of an affertion of M.~ 
de Maillet, almoft as abfurd as de la Chambre’s treatife, 
that the Nile, which in Egypt is the only fountain of plea- 
fure, of health, and plenty, has a mixture of one tenth of 
mud during the time of the inundation: pleafant and 
-wholefome flream, truly, to which Fleetditch would be Hip- 
-pocrene. has i 
But whatever were the conjectures of the dreamers of 
‘antiquity, modern travellers and philofophers, defcribing 
without fyftem or prejudice what their eyes faw have 
found that the inundation of Egypt has been effected by 
natural means, perfectly confonant with the ordinary rules 
of Providence, and the laws given for the government of 
the reft of the univerfe. They have found that the plenti- 
‘ful fall of the tropical rains produced every year at the 
fame time, by the action of a violent fun, has been uniform- 
ly, without miracle, the caufe of i gypt being regularly over- 
‘flowed. 
Tue fun being nearly ftationary for fome days in the 
‘tropic of Capricorn, the air there becomes fo.much rarified, 
that the heavier winds, charged with watery particles,rufh 
in upon it from the Atlantic on the weft, and from the In- 
.dian Ocean on the eaft. ‘The fouth wind, moreover, loaded — 
swith heavy vapour, condenfed in that high ridge of moun- 
tains not far fouth of the Line, which forms a {pine to the 
peninfula of Africa, and, running northward with the o- 
ther two, furnith wherewithal to reftore the equilibrium. 
‘Tug 
