“920 TRAVELS TODISCOVER 
their waters to the eaft and to the weft. Thefe become the 
heads of great rivers that run through the interior coun. 
-tries of Ethiopia (correfponding to the -fea-coaft of Melinda 
-and Mombaza) into the Indian Ocean, whilft, on the weft< 
ward, they are the origin of the vaft ftreams that fall into 
‘the Atlantic, pafling through Benin and Congo, fouthward 
-of the river Gambea, and the Sremealeoua: 
In fhort, the pectic rains from the tropic of Capricorn — 
‘to the Line, being in equal quantity with thofe that fall 
between the Line and the tropic of Cancer, it is plain, that 
if the land of Ethiopia floped equally from the Line fouth- 
ward and northward, half of the rains that fall on each fide 
would go north, and half fouth, but as the ground from 5°. 
N. declines all fouthward, it follows that the river which ~ 
runs to the fouthward mutt be equal to thofe that run to the 
northward, lus the rain that falls in the 5° north latitude, 
where the ground begins to flope to the fourhward, and 
there can be little doubt this is at leaft one of the reafons 
why there are in the fouthern continent fo many rivers 
larger than the Nile that run both into the Indian and At- 
lantic Oceans. 
From this very true and fenfible relation handed to us by 
Herodotus, from the authority of the fecretary of Minerva, 
the Nubian geographer has framed a fiction of his own, 
whichis, that the river Nile divides itfelfintotwo branches,one 
of which runs into Egypt northward, and one through the 
country of the negroes weftward, into the Atlantic Ocean. — 
And this opinion has been greedily adopted by M. Ludolf*, 
who 
* Vid. Ludolf in Proemio Hiftor. thiop. 1. 8. Ie. lib. i. cap. Vili. ps is Leo Africanus 
in defcrip. Africa, lib. i. cap. vii. 
