However well acquainted the count was with the key for entering into Abyssinia, he had not apparently got the door. In fact, his first scheme was a most ridiculous one; he resolved to ascend the Nile in a barge armed with small cannon, and all necessary provisions for himself and wife. Some people wiser than himself, whom he met at Cairo, suggested to him, that, supposing government might protect him so far as to allow his barge safely to pass the confines of Egypt and to the first cataract, where the malice of the pilots would certainly have destroyed her, and supposing she was arrived at Ibrim or Deir, the last garrisons depending on Cairo, and that this might have been atchieved by money, (for by money any thing may be obtained from the government of Cairo,) yet still, some days journey above the garrisons of Deir and Ibrim, begin the barren and dreadful deserts of Nubia; and farther south, at the great cataract of Jan Adel, the Nile falls twenty feet down a perpendicular rock; so here certainly was to be the end of his voyage; but the count, being ignorant of the manners of those countries, and exceedingly presumptuous of his own powers, flattered himself to obtain such assistance from the garrison of Ibrim and Deir, that he could unscrew his vessel, take her to pieces, and carry her, by force of men, round behind the cataract, where he was to rescrew and launch her again into the Nile.

The Kennouss, inhabiting near the cataract, have several villages, particularly two, one called Succoot, or the place of tents, where Kalid Ibn el Waalid, after taking Syene in the Khalifat of Omar, encamped his army in his march to Dongola; the other, in a plain near the river, called Asel Dimmo, or the Field of Blood, where the same Kalid defeated an army of Nubians, who were marching to the relief of Dongola, which was by him immediately after besieged and taken. These two villages are on the Egyptian side of the cataract; the direct occupation of the inhabitants is gathering sena, where it very much abounds, and they carry it in boats down to Cairo. Above, and on the other side of the cataract, is another large village of the Kennouss, called Takaki. Some of these miserable wretches, were brought to the count, and a treaty made, that all these men of the two villages were to assist him in his re-embarkation, after he had got his barge round the cataract; and among these barbarians he would have lost his life.

The count, besides his wife, had brought with him his lieutenant, Mr Norden, a Dane, who was to serve him as draughtsman; but neither the count, countess, nor lieutenant understood one word of the languages. There are always (happily for travellers) wise and honest men among the French and Venetian merchants at Cairo, who, seeing the obstinacy of the count, persuaded him that it was more military, and more in the stile of an admiral, to detach Norden, his inferior officer, to reconnoitre Ibrim, Deir, and the cataract of Jan Adel, as also to renew his treaty with the Kennouss at Succoot and Asel Dimmo.

Norden accordingly sailed in the common embarkations used upon the Nile; the voyage is in every body’s hands. It has certainly a considerable deal of merit, but is full of squabbles and fightings with boat-men and porters, which might as well have been left out, as they lead to no instruction, but serve only to discourage travellers, for they were chiefly owing to ignorance of language. It was with the utmost difficulty, and after many disasters, that Norden arrived at Syenè, and the first cataract; after which greater and greater were encountered before he reached Ibrim, where the Kascheff put him in prison, robbed him of what he had in the boat, and scarcely suffered him to return to Cairo without cutting his throat, which, for a considerable time, he and his soldiers had determined to do.

This sample of the difficulties, or rather impossibility of the voyage into Abyssinia by Nubia, discouraged the count; and much reason had he to be thankful that his attempt had not ended among the Kennouss at Succoot. He therefore changed his plan, and resolved to enter Abyssinia by a voyage round the Cape into the Indian Ocean, through the Straits of Babelmandeb into the Red Sea, and so to Masuah. In this voyage he began to make use of his Spanish commission, and, having taken two English ships, under protection of a neutral fort in the Isle of May, he was met there some days after by commodore Barnet, who made all his ships prizes, and sent the count home passenger in a Portuguese ship to Lisbon.

CHAP. XIV.
Description of the Sources of the Nile—Of Geesh—Accounts of its several Cataracts—Course from its Rise to the Mediterranean.

I hope that what I have now said will be thought sufficient to convince all impartial readers, that these celebrated sources have, as it were, by a fatality, remained to our days as unknown as they were to antiquity, no good or genuine voucher having yet been produced capable of proving that they were before discovered, or seen by the curious eye of any traveller, from earliest ages to this day; and it is with confidence I propose to my reader, that he will consider me as still standing at these fountains, and patiently hear from me the recital of the origin, course, names, and circumstances of this the most famous river in the world, which he will in vain seek from books, or from any other human authority whatever, and which, by the care and attention I have paid to the subject, will, I hope, be found satisfactory here:—

——Non fabula mendax
Ausa loqui de fonte tuo est: ubicunque videris,
Quœreris; et nulli contingit gloria genti,
Ut Nilo sit lœta suo, tua flumina prodam,
Quâ Deus undarum celator, Nile, tuarum
Te mihi nôsse dedit.——
Lucan.

The Agows of Damot pay divine honour to the Nile; they worship the river, and thousands of cattle have been offered, and still are offered, to the spirit supposed to reside at its source. They are divided into clans, or tribes; and it is worthy of observation, that it is said there never was a feud, or hereditary animosity between any two of these clans; or, if the seeds of any such were sown, they did not vegetate longer than till the next general convocation of all the tribes, who meet annually at the source of the river, to which they sacrifice, calling it by the name of the God of Peace. One of the least considerable of these clans, for power and number, has still the preference among its brethren, from the circumstance that, in its territory, and near the miserable village that gives it name, are situated the much sought-for springs from which the Nile rises.