alee idmibaeee 4 04°) teal 
THE SOURCE OF THE NILE 692 
told to Omar, he ordered the new Nilometer to be demolifh- 
ed ; but as it had been part of the complaint to him, that 
their counting the divifions of the Mikeas * was the reafon 
why the people were kept in continual terror, he fhut up 
the accefs to Chriftians, and that prohibition continues in 
Cairo to this day ; and, inftead of permitting ocular infpec- 
tion, he ordered the daily increafe to be proclaimed, but in 
a manner fo unintelligible, that the Egyptians in general] no 
longer underftood it, nor do they underftand it now; for, be- 
ginning at a given point, which was not the bottom of the 
Nilometer, he went on, telling the increafe by fubtracting 
from the upper divifion; fo that as nobody knew the lower 
point from which he began, although they might compre- 
hend how much it had rifen fince the crier proclaimed its 
increafe, yet they never could know the height of the water 
that was in the Nilometer when the proclamation began, 
nor what the divifion was to which it had afcended on the 
Peller 
ee 
To underftand this, let us premife, that, on the point of 
- the ifland Rhoda, between Geeza and Cairo, near the middle 
of the river, but nearer to Geeza, is a round tower, and in 
that an apartment, in the middle of which is a very neat 
well, or ciftern, lined with marble, to which the Nile has 
free accefs, through a large opening like an embrafure, the 
bottom of the well being on the fame level with the bottom 
of the river. In the middle of this well rifes a thin column, 
as far as I can remember, of eight faces of blue and white 
marble, to the foot of which, if you are permitted to defcend, 
452 you 
* Or Nilometer. 
