Venit ad occasum, mundique extrema Sesostris,
Et Pharios currus regum cervicibus egit:
Antè tamen vestros amnes Rhodanúmque, Padúmque,
Quàm Nilum de fonte bibit.——
Lucan.
Cambyses’ attempt to penetrate into Ethiopia, and the defeat of his schemes, I have already narrated at sufficient length[124].
——Vesanus in ortus
Cambyses longi populos pervenit ad œvi,
Defectusque epulis, & pastus cœde suorum
Ignoto te, Nile, redit.——
Lucan.
The attention paid by Alexander, the next prince who attempted an expedition towards these unknown fountains, merits a little more of our consideration. After he had conquered Egypt, and was arrived at the temple of Jupiter Ammon, (the celebrated and ancient deity of the shepherds) in the Theban desert, the first question he asked was concerning the spot where the Nile rose. Having received from the priests sufficient directions for attempting the discovery, he is said, as the next very sensible step, to have chosen natives of Ethiopia as the likeliest people to succeed in the search he had commanded them to make:—
Summus Alexander regum, quem Memphis ador at,
Invidit Nilo, misitque per ultima terræ
Æthiopum lectos: illos rubicunda perusti
Zona poli tenuit, Nilum videre calentem.
Lucan.
These Ethiopians, parting from their temple in the desert of Elvah, or Oasis, or, which will come to the same thing, from the banks of the Nile, or Thebes, would hold nearly the same course as Poncet had done, till they fell in with the Nile about Moscho in the kingdom of Dongola; they would continue the same route till they came to Halfaia, where the Bahar el Abiad (or white river) joins the Nile at Hojila, five miles above that town; and, to avoid the mountains of Kuara, they would continue on the west side of the Nile, between it and the Bahar el Abiad; and, keeping the Nile close on their left, they would follow its direction south to the mountains of Fazuclo, through countries where its course must necessarily be known. After having passed the great chain of mountains, called Dyre and Tegla, between lat. 11° and 12° N. where are the great cataracts, they again came into the flat country of the Gongas, as far as Bizamo, nearly in 9° N. there the river, leaving its hitherto constant direction, N. and S. turns due E. and surrounds Gojam.
It is probable the discoverers, always looking for it to the south, took this unusual sudden turn east to be only a winding of the river, which would soon be compensated by an equal return to the west where they would meet it again; they therefore continued their journey south, till near the line, and never saw it more, as they could have no possible notion it had turned back behind them, and that they had left it as far north as lat. 11° They reported then to Alexander what was truth, that they had ascended the Nile as far south as lat. 9°, where it unexpectedly took its course to the east, and was seen no more. The river, moreover, was not known, nor to be heard of near the Line, or farther southward, nor was it diminished in size, nor had it given any symptom they were near its source; they had found the Nile calentem, (warm) while they expected its rise among melting snows.
This discovery (for so far it was one) of the course of the river to the east, seems to have made a strong impression on Alexander’s mind, so that when he arrived at near the head of the Indus, then swelled with the thawing snows of mount Caucasus, and overflowing in summer, he thought he was arrived at the source of this famous river the Nile which he had before seen in the west, and rejoiced at it exceedingly, as the noblest of his atchievements[125]; he immediately wrote to acquaint his mother of it; but being soon convinced of his error, and being far above propagating a falsehood, even for his own glory, he instantly erased what he had wrote upon that subject. This however did not entirely dissatisfy Alexander, for he proposed an expedition in person towards these fountains, if he had returned from India in safety.
——Non illi flamma, nec undæ,
Nec sterilis Libye, nec Syrticus obstitit Ammon.
Isset in occasus, mundi devexa secutus:
Ambissetque polos, Nilumque a fonte bibisset:
Occurrit suprema dies, naturaque solum
Hunc potuit finem vesano ponere regi.
Lucan.
It must no doubt seem preposterous to those that are not very conversant with the classics, that a prince so well instructed as Alexander himself was, who had with him in his army many philosophers, geographers, and astronomers, and was in constant correspondence with Aristotle, a man of almost universal knowledge, that, after having seen the Nile in Egypt coming from the south, he should think he was arrived at the head of it while on the banks of the Indus, so far to the N. E. of its Ethiopian course. This difficulty, however, has a very easy solution in the prejudices of those times. The ancients were incorrigible as to their error in opinion concerning two seas.