Paez next says, that it is three miles from that village of Geesh to the fountains of the Nile. Now, as my quadrant was placed in my tent, on the brink of the cliff of Geesh, it was necessary for me to measure that distance; and by allowing for it to reduce my observations to the exact spot where the sources rose, I did accordingly with a chain measure from the brink of the precipice to the center of the altar, in which the principal fountain stands, and found it 1760 feet or 586 yards 2 feet, and this is the distance Paez calls a league, or the largest range of a shell shot from a mortar; this I do aver is an error that is absolutely impossible for any travellers to commit upon the spot, or else his narrative in general should have very little weight in point of precision.
I shall close these observations with one which I think must clearly evince Paez had never been upon the spot. He says the field, in which the fountains of the Nile are, is of very difficult access, the ascent to it being very steep, excepting on the north, where it is plain and easy. Now, if we look at the beginning of this description, we should think it would be the descent, not the ascent that would be troublesome; for the fountains were placed in a valley, and people rather descend into valleys than ascend into them; but supposing it a valley in which there was a field, upon which there was a mountain, and on the mountain these fountains, still I say that these mountains are nearly inaccessible on the three sides, but that the most difficult of them all is the north, the way we ascend from the plain of Goutto. From the east, by Sacala, the ascent is made from the valley of Litchambara, and from the plain of Assoa, to the south, you have the almost perpendicular craggy cliff of Geesh, covered with thorny bushes, trees, and bamboos, which conceal the mouths of the caverns; and, on the north, you have the mountains of Aformasha, thick-set with all sorts of thorny shrubs and trees, especially with the kantussa; these thickets are, moreover, full of wild beasts, especially huge, long-haired baboons, which we frequently met walking upright. Through these high and difficult mountains we have only narrow paths, like those of sheep, made by the goats, or the wild beasts we are speaking of, which, after we had walked on them for a long space, landed us frequently at the edge of some valley, or precipice, and forced us to go back again to search for a new road. From towards Zeegam, to the westward, and from the plain where the river winds so much, is the only easy access to the fountains of the Nile, and they that ascend to them by this way will not think even that approach too easy.
It remains only for me to say, that neither have the Jesuits, (Paez his brethren in the mission, and his contemporaries) made any geographical use of this discovery, either in longitude or latitude; nor have the historians of his society, who have followed afterwards, with all the information and documents before them, thought proper even to quote his travels; it will not be easy, from the authority of a man like Athanasius Kircher, writing at Rome, to support the reality of such a discovery, not to be found in the genuine writings of Peter Paez himself. With such a voyage, if it had been real, there should have been published at least an itinerary, and most of the Jesuits were capable enough to have made a rough observation of longitude and latitude, in the country where they resided, for near one hundred years. Add to this, no observation appears from any Jesuit of the idolatry or pagan worship, which prevailed near the source of the Nile, and this would seem to have been their immediate province.
From Dancaz they might have taken very properly their departure, and, by a compass, the use of which was then well known to the Portuguese, they might have kept their route to those fountains without much trouble, and, with a sufficient degree of exactness, to shew all the world the road by which they went. They were not fifty miles distant from Geesh when at Gorgora, and they have erred above sixty, which is ten miles more than the whole distance; this happened because they sought the fountains in Gojam, from which, at Gorgora, they knew themselves to be at that distance, and where the source of the Nile never was.
When I set out from Gondar, whose latitude and longitude I had first well ascertained, I thought in such a pursuit as this, where local discovery was the only thing sought after in all ages, that the best way was to substitute perhaps a drier journal, or itinerary, to a more pleasant account; with this view I kept the length of my journies each day by a watch, and my direction by the compass. I did observe, indeed, many altitudes of the sun and stars at Dingleber, at Kelti, and at Goutto; and lastly, I ascertained the other extreme, the sources of the Nile, by a number of observations of latitude, and by a very distinct and favourable one for the longitude: I calculated none of these celestial observations till I went back to Gondar. I returned by a different way on the other side of the Nile, and made one observation of the sun at Welled Abea Abbo, the house of Shalaka Welled Amlac, of whom I am about to speak. Arrived at Gondar, I summed up my days journies, reduced my bearings and distances to a plain course, as if I had been at sea, taking a mean where there was any thing doubtful, and in this topographical draught laid down every village through which I had passed, or which I had seen at a small distance out of the road, to which I may add every river, an immense number of which I had crossed between Gondar and Geesh, whither I was going. The reader, upon the inspection of this small map, will form some, but a very inadequate idea of the immense labour it cost me: However, the result, when I arrived at Gondar, amply rewarded me for my pains, upon comparing my route by the compass, to what it came to be when ascertained by observation; I found my error of computation upon the whole to be something more than 9 miles in latitude, and very nearly 7 in longitude; an error not perceptible in the journey upon any reduced scale, and very immaterial to all purposes of geography in any large one.
Now Peter Paez, or any man laying claim to a discovery so long and so ardently desired, should surely have done the same; especially as from Gorgora he had little more than half of the journal to keep. But if it were true, that he made the discovery which Kircher attributes to him, still, for want of this necessary attention, he has left the world in the darkness he found it; he travelled like a thief, discovered that secret source, and took a peep at it, then covered it again as if he had been affrightened at the sight of it.
Ludolf and Vossius are very merry, without mentioning names, with this story of the discovery, which they think Kircher makes for Peter Paez, whom they call the River Finder: they say, it is extremely laughable to think, that the emperor of Abyssinia brought a Jesuit of Europe to be the antiquary of his country, and to instruct him first, that the fountains of the Nile were in his dominions, and in what part of them. But, with Vossius’s leave, this is a species of intemperate ill-founded criticism; neither Kircher, nor Paez, nor whoever was author of that work, ever said they instructed the emperor about the place in his dominions where the Nile arose, as what he says is only that the Agows of Geesh reported that the mountain trembled in dry weather, and had done so that year, when the emperor, who was present, confirmed the Agow’s report: this is not saying that Peter Paez told the emperor encamped with his army upon the fountains, that the Nile rose in his dominions, and that this was the source. Wo be to the works of Scaliger, Bochart, or Vossius, when they shall, in their turn, be submitted to such criticism as this.
A Protestant mission was the next, that I know of at least, which succeeded that of the Portuguese, and consisted only of one traveller, Peter Heyling, of Lubec; although he lived in the country, nay, governed it several years, he never attempted to visit the source of that river; he had dedicated himself to a studious and solitary life, having, among other parts of his reading, a very competent knowledge of Roman, or civil law; he is said to have given a great deal of his time to the compiling an institute of that law in the Abyssinian language for the use of that nation, upon a plan he had brought from Germany; but he did not live to finish it, though that and two other books, written in Geez, still exist in private hands in Abyssinia, at least I have been often confidently told so.
The next and last attempt I shall take notice of, and one of the most extraordinary that ever was made for the discovery of the Nile, was that of a German nobleman, Peter Joseph le Roux, comte de Desneval. This gentleman had been in the Danish navy ever since the year 1721, and in 1739 was raised to the rank of rear-admiral in that service. He says, in a publication of his own now lying before me, that the ambassador of Louis XIV. (M. du Roule) and all those sent by the Dutch and English to visit that country, had perished, because they were ignorant of the proper key to be employed to enter that country, which he flattered himself he had found in Denmark.
In 1739 he resigned his Danish commission, and began his first attempt in Egypt, whilst, for the greater facility of travelling in these mild and hospitable countries, he took his wife along with him. The count and the countess went as far as Cairo, where they wisely began at a festival to dispute upon the etiquette with a Turkish mob, and this bringing the janizaries and guards of police upon them to take them into custody, the grey mare, as they say, proved the better horse; Madame la comtesse de Desneval exerted herself so much, that she defeated the body of janizaries, wounding several of them, armed only with a very feminine weapon, a pair of scissars, which, with full as much profit, and much more decency, she might have been using, surrounded with her family at home.