716 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER, © 
Mucu has been wrote about a miraculous drop; or dew, 
called Gotta, or Nutta, which falls in Egypt -precifely- on: 
St John’s day, and is believed. to be the. peculiar gift of 
that faint; it flops the plague, caufes dough woe 
or ferment, | si aunounces a {peedy and plentiful spupey pss 
tion. 
I nope my reader will not expect that I fhould enter into » 
the difcuffion of the part St John is thought to have in this. _ 
event, my bufinefs is.only with natural caufes... 
Mempuis and:Alexandria,:and all the ancient cities of Lo- - 
wer Egypt, ftandupon:cifterns, into. which the Nile, upon its « 
overflowing, was admitted, and there- remained till it. had - 
-depofited all-its fediment, and became fit for drinking. Thefe - 
cifterns are now full of filth; though in difrepair, the water, . 
when the Nile is high. infinuates itfelf into them: spree ‘ 
the broken conduits. - 
In February and March’the funis on:its approach’to:the - 
zenith of one extremity of Egypt, and of courfe has a very 
confiderable influence upon the other... The Nile being now - 
fallen low, the water in: the eifterns putrifies, and the river - 
itfelf has loft all:its volatile and finer parts by the continued - 
action of a vertical fun.; fo that; inftead of being fubject to 
evaporation, it becomes-daily more and.more inclined to- 
putrefaction. . About St John’s’ day * it: receives a plentiful 
mixture of the frefh and fallen rain from Ethiopia, which 
aac and refrefhes the almoft corrupted river, and the fun 
near 
*-In Abyflinia, the 24th June. 
