THE SOURCE OF THE NILE 715 
Turs idea, indeed, had fubfifted as long as the royal fa- 
amily lived in the fouth part of Abyflinia, in Shoa, in the 
neighbourhood, and fometimes on the very {pot where the 
attempt was made. When the court, however, removed 
northward, and the princes, no longer confined in Gefhen, 
(a mountain in Amhara) were imprifoned, as they now are, 
in Wechné, in Beleflen, near Gondar, thefe tranfactions of 
remote times and places were gradually forgot, aad often 
mifreprefented ; though, fo far down as the beginning of this 
century, we find Tecla Haimanout I. * (king of Abyfiinia) 
_ expoftulating by a letter with the bafha of Cairo upon the 
murderof the French envoy M. du Roule, and threatening the 
Turkith regency, that, if they perfifted in fuch mifbehaviour, 
he would make the Nile the inftrument of his vengeance, 
the keys of which were in his hand, to give them famine or 
plenty, as they fhould deferye of him. In my time, no fen- 
fible man in Abyflinia believed that fuch a thing was pof- 
fible, and few that it had ever been attempted. 
As for the opinion of thofe, that the Nile may be turned » 
into the Red Sea from Nubia or Egypt, it deferves no an- 
fwer. What could be the motive of fuch an undertaking? 
‘Would the Egyptians fuffer fuch an operation to be carried 
on in their own country for the fake of flarving themfelves? 
and if the country had been taken from them by an enemy, 
ftill it could not be the intereft of that conqueror to let the 
inhabitants, now become his fubjects, perifh, and much lefs 
to reduce them to the neceflity of fo doin ing by fuch an un- 
eee vel 3 | 
spite 6 i 4X 2 . . Mucu 
* See this letter in the life ef that prince. 
