308 On Egypt and the Nile 



a Menianthes, or a fmall white Nymphcea. The lake of the Amard, or Im- 

 mortals, was not wholly unknown to the Greeks and Romans, but they 

 could not exactly tell, where it was fituated ; and we are not much better 

 acquainted with its true (a) fituation : it is called Nilides by Juba j Nili- 

 ducus and JVufaptis, in the Peutingerian Table, It is the Oriental Marjk 

 of Ptolemy, and was not far from Rapta, now Quiloa; for that well-in- 

 formed geographer mentions a certain Diogenes, who went on a trading 

 voyage to India, and on his return, was overtaken near the Cape, now cal- 

 led Garde/an, by a violent ftorm from the N. N. E. which carried him to 

 the vicinity of Rapta, where the natives affured him, that the marjhes or 

 lakes, whence the Nile ilTued, were at no confiderable diftance. 



- V / i < i rh ', • . : 



_ t ,THE old Egyptians themfelves, like the prefent Hindus, (who are apt s 

 indeed, to place refervpirs for water, of different magnitudes, on the high 

 grounds of molt countries) had a notion of a receptacle, which fupplied the 

 Nile and other great African rivers ; for the Secretary of M i nerva's temple 

 infonrjed Herodotus, that the holy river proceeded from deep lakes be- 

 tween the mountains of Cropbi and Mophi ; that part of its waters took their 

 courfe toward the! north, and the reft to the fouth through Ethiopia: but 

 cither the fecretary himfelf was not perfectly matter of the fubjecl:, or the 

 hiftorian mifunderflood him i for Herodotus conceived, that thofe lakes- 

 were clofe to Syene (6), and, as he had been there himfelf without feeing 

 any thing of the kind, he looked upon the whole account as a fiction. It 

 is DAt improbable, however, that the lakes were faid by the fecretary to be 

 near the country of Azania or Azan, which was miflaken for Syene, in Egypt 

 called Ufwdr, or Ajwdn. 



{a) Flin. ;. 5. c. 9. {b) z Herod, c. 28. 



