Nothing can be more beautiful than this spot; the small rising hills about us were all thick-covered with verdure, especially with clover, the largest and finest I ever saw; the tops of the heights crowned with trees of a prodigious size; the stream, at the banks of which we were sitting, was limpid and pure as the finest crystal; the ford, covered thick with a bushy kind of tree that seemed to affect to grow to no height, but thick with foliage and young blanches, rather to court the surface of the water, whilst it bore, in prodigious quantities, a beautiful yellow flower, not unlike a single wild rose of that colour, but without thorns; and, indeed, upon examination, we found that it was not a species of the rose, but of hypericum.
From the source to this beautiful ford, below the church of St Michael Geesh, I enjoyed my second victory over this coy river, after the first obtained at the fountains themselves. What might still be said of the world in general no longer applied to me:—
——Nec contigit ulli
Hoc vidisse caput;
And again,
Nec licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre.
Here, at the ford, after having stepped over it fifty times, I observed it no larger than a common mill stream. The Nile, from this ford, turns to the westward, and, after running over loose stones occasionally, in that direction, about four miles farther, the angle of inclination increasing greatly, broken water, and a fall commences of about six feet, and thus it gets rid of the mountainous place of its nativity, and issues into the plain of Goutto, where is its first cataract; for, as I have said before, I don’t account the broken water, or little falls, cataracts, which are not at all visible in the height of the rains.
Arrived in the plain of Goutto, the river seems to have lost all its violence, and scarcely is seen to flow, but, at the same time, it there makes so many sharp, unnatural windings, that it differs from any other river I ever saw, making above twenty sharp angular peninsulas in the course of five miles, through a bare, marshy plain of clay, quite destitute of trees, and exceedingly inconvenient and unpleasant to travel. After passing this plain, it turns due north, receives the tribute of many small streams, the Gometti, the Googueri, and the Kebezza, which descend from the mountains of Aformasha; and, united, fall into the Nile about twenty miles below its source; it begins here to run rapidly, and again receives a number of beautiful rivulets, which have their rise in the heights of Litchambara, the semi-circular range of mountains that pass behind, and seem to inclose Aformasha: These are the Caccino, the Carnachiuli, the Googueri, the Iworra, the Jeddeli, and the Minch, all which, running into the Davola, join the Nile something less than a mile west of the church of Abbo.
It is now become a considerable stream; its banks high and broken, covered with old timber trees for the space of about three miles; it inclines to the north-east, and winds exceedingly, and is then joined by the small river Diwa from the east. It then makes a semi-circle, and receives Dee-ohha, turns sharply to the east, and falls down its second cataract at Kerr. About three miles below this cataract, the large, pleasant, and limpid Jemma pays its tribute to the Nile. Though its course is now mostly north, through Maitsha on the east, and Aroossi and Sankraber on the west, it still is inclining toward the lake Tzana, and, after receiving the rivers Boha and Amlac Ohha, small streams from the west, and the Assar, Aroossi, and Kelti, large rivers from the east, it crosses the south end of the lake Tzana for about seven leagues, preserving the colour of its stream distinct from that of the lake, till it issues out at the west side of it in the territory of Dara, where there is a ford, though very deep and dangerous, immediately where it first resumes the appearance of a river.
The deep stream is here exceedingly rapid; the banks in the course of a few miles become very high, and are covered with a verdure, abundant and varied beyond all description: passing afterwards below Dara, it bounds that narrow stripe of flat country which is called Foggora, confined between the lake and the mountains of Begemder, till it arrives at its third cataract of Alata, a small village of Mahometans, on the east side of the river, and there exhibits a scene that requires more fancy, and the description of a more poetical pen than mine, although the impression the sight of it made upon me will certainly never be removed but with life.
The course of the river is now S. E.; in that direction it washes the western part of Begemder and Amhara on the right; the river then incloses the province of Gojam, so that, in the circle that it makes in returning towards its source, that province remains always on the right.