Although M. d’Arnaud, my companion during the voyage on the White Stream, says that the latter is navigable for a “cinquante de milles” from the island of Tshànker, and arbitrarily makes the main arm of the smaller rivulet of the Nile spring from the east; yet this is either only the remnant of our old affection for the easterly descent of the river; or it may be the result of a want of truthfulness. I challenge Thibaut and Sabatier, his own countrymen, to come forward and state whether there was ever any talk about such a main-arm as he describes. According to Làkono, who had been there, and called the land wherein the source lies by the name of Anjan, the water in the four brooks, by the conflux of which the White Nile is formed, reached only up to the ankles. This land, however, lay to the south, as my travelling companions must remember, and which Arnaud also allows, as I will afterwards prove.
Now if we would follow for at least 5° towards the north such a Nile brook, from this county of Anjan to the Forest of Babia, in order to be extraordinarily complaisant to M. d’Abbadie, who might rely upon Arnaud, we should not find, even with a microscope, the silver threads of his sources.
Now if I wished to discard the opinion of the people of Bari, as being contrary to my conviction, like d’Abbadie has done with respect to the views of the natives, because they were opposite to his theory, I would not say anything of the rashness of the “Knight of the Source,” nor envy him the fame which is due to him as an indefatigable traveller, and the croix d’honneur awarded to him for this presumed discovery; that is, supposing that the stream we had before us on the island of Tshanker wound to the east from the south under the rocks of Lugi and Kalleri (evidently harbingers of a high mountainous region), and then flowed humbly under the mountain-chain of Logoja, to seek its origin from the fourth to about the eighth degree of north latitude. The river, however, does not accommodate itself to this course, but steps forth boldly from its rocky gates, as a mountain-stream. The ascending ground, and the rocks scattered in the river above the island, shew that the fall must increase considerably in the mountainous region—as even the rocky wall of Kàlleri forms a vast waterfall at the rainy season—which might make us conclude that there is a lake lying high, in which an extensive mountain plateau pours its waters, or perhaps even serves as a periodical channel far above the Nile. The greater gradation of the river-bed, necessarily following its entrance into the rocky territory, must at last make the Forest of Babia an enormous height, in a progressive ratio; and the latter, though at a distance of four to five degrees, must be connected with mountain-ridges, to lead the stream into a high longitudinal valley lying to the south, as if into an aqueduct, so that it may not pour into the vast basin to the west, to which the Sobàt also is hastening. Without entering point by point into Antoine d’Abbadie’s accounts, which are not always clear, and the hypothesis of his defenders, I must assume that he abode not only in Inarya, the field of his study on the sources, but also in Kafa and Bonga, for he expressly says so. I can readily believe also, that the complication of rivers in the Forest of Babia cost him considerable pains to find out the true source of the White Nile, against the general and prevailing opinion there; likewise, that he tried to discover, by means of verbal expressions, the relative quantity of water of the five tributaries, because otherwise he must have resided there three or four years, &c.
Now if it be true that the people of Damot have emigrated from Gojam, the Abbay must be well known to them, because Gros-Damot lies between water, which partly encompasses Gojam, the Gojab, and the Didesa. I do not altogether understand how he can reject the testimony of the people of Damot, on the futile ground that they descended from Gojam. If this nation now extends up to the summit of the sources, so must they also know from their primeval acquaintance with the Abbay, whether their waters pour into the Abbay or not. Though the exploration of the mouth of the Niger has also cost much labour and time; and though Dutch simplicity or craft still makes the Rhine flow into the Waal, yet it is more natural for a nation dwelling on a river to know in what direction it flows, than to be able to give the direction of the curves and windings of its tributaries towards the sources. And is it likely, that a people whom he calls aborigines, and who must therefore be acquainted with their home, should not know whether the river runs towards the south or to the north, in a stream territory with which they are well acquainted?
The second decision of D’Abbadie, that the larger mass of water decides a source or a tributary, overthrows entirely his third and most essential one, viz. that one ought to look at the direction of the river; because, in truth, he has neither followed the latter as far as the White Nile, nor to the Sobàt, whose sources appear to him a mere bagatelle. It almost seems as if he chivalrously cut asunder the Gordian knot of that entanglement of rivers during his hermitage in Iaka, and has tried to force on us a vague hypothesis as being the real matter of fact.
There is a strange controversy in the relation of his journey of discovery, which ought to be sifted closely. He had long passed over the mountain-chain of Nare, when he took up his abode in the Forest of Babia, having arrived, as he expressly declares, from the basin of the Abbay (Blue Nile) into that of the White Nile; and yet he had, on his right, the sources of the Didesa, a tributary of the Blue Nile. According to this statement, he has never issued from the combination of streams of the Blue Nile, or he has come to a point to which rivers flow, as in Paradise, from all four corners of the world. All this is not exactly adapted to make us believe that the river Gojab, or Uma (Omo), which springs from those sources, is identical with the White Nile.
Mr. Charles Johnston has conceived the strange belief that he participates in the views of D’Abbadie; but the good man makes his Gibbee (Durr, Omo) the Gibe and Gojàm of D’Abbadie, receive at last the waters of the Abi (Abbay), in the environs of Fàzogl; consequently he has claims with D’Abbadie to the discovery of the main source of the Blue Nile.
Mr. Ayrton also (in the Athenæum, No. MLXI.), steps into the lists for M. D’Abbadie. Notwithstanding his learned attempt to fix etymologically the situation of the source-territory of the Nile by a fortuitous coincidence of words according to a previous plan of D’Abbadie, I cannot assent to his views.
If the inhabitants of the coast of the Red Sea first navigated this Stream, as naturally would be the case, and the Sabæans, from Arabia, conquered Habesh in the time of Solomon, the latter colony might still have remained their principal commercial settlement on the coast, and even have been planted long before their immigrations from Asia. The dialect of the Ethiopians, which we still recognise to belong to the Semitic languages, announces that there was a communication with these maritime countries before the period of history: yet, commerce on the coast of Habesh might perhaps only have remained a coasting-trade; for history hands down to posterity merely the fact, that the Arabs made journeys to China, and that the Nabathæans brought Indian goods and asphalt on their camels to the Egyptian market at the time of Alexander the Great,—the latter article being fished up from the Red Sea. It is improbable that the Sabæans, who were very well known under the successors of Alexander, extended into the Ethiopian highlands their colonies in Habesh, where even now the Arabic language only prevails on parts of the coast, in commercial intercourse. It is very unlikely, also, that they have given the name of “Mountains of the Moon” to a region; because such a change of a local name, which was certainly imposed upon that country beforehand, pre-supposes a regular Sabæan colony on the spot, whose idiom might perhaps be discovered in a different way than by the solitary word “Gamarö,” or “Gimirö;” for we might derive this as well from “Gimri,” or “Gumri,” (turtle-doves), as I have heard also somewhere in the Desert the name of “Gebel Gimri.” It seems to me, therefore, that it is rather too daring to wish to identify this expression,—according to Abbadie, “Gamru,” or “Gmura,” with the Arabic “Kamar.” But if these parts, so remarkable on account of the sources of the Nile, had been known in the ancient times, the Egyptian priests and Herodotus, or most certainly the later Greeks, would have learned something of them.
The argument that the illustrious Claudius Ptolemy derived his σεληνης ορος from the Arabs, appears to me completely untenable. There is no record existing beyond the time of this geographer that I know of, which mentions “Gebl Kamar;” if there were, it would be convincing. There can be no doubt that Ptolemy acquired his information from Egyptian elephant-hunters, otherwise he would not have transferred the origin of the sources to the neighbourhood of the Equator. These elephant-hunts were fitted out like military expeditions by the kings of Egypt, and penetrated, according to Pliny, far into the Ethiopian provinces, beyond the Lybian deserts.