On the other hand, Pliny says, Meroë, the most considerable of all the islands of the Nile, is called Astaboras, from the name of its left channel—“Circa clarissimam earum Meroën, Astabores lævo alveo dictus;[133]” which, cannot describe any other place than the confluence of those two rivers, the Nile and Atbara. The same author says farther, that the sun is vertical twice a year, once when proceeding northward he enters into the 18th degree, Taurus, and after returning southward into the 14th degree of the Lion.——Lucan says the same:—

——Latè tibi gurgite rupto
Ambitur nigris Meroë fæcunda colonis,
Læta comis hebeni; quæ quamvis arbore multâ
Frondeat, æstatem nullâ sibi mitigat umbrâ:
Linea tam rectum mundi ferit illa Leonem.

Now Gojam, being in lat. 10°, could never answer this description.

But there are in these lines two circumstances which are peculiar to the peninsula of Atbara, or Meroë, and described as such by the poet. The first is, the inhabitants of Meroë were black, such were the Gymnosophists, the first philosophers and inhabitants of this island, and such they have ever been down to the Saracen conquest. On the other hand, nobody will pretend to say that the people of Gojam are black; they are long-haired, and of as fair a complexion as other Abyssinians; nor was it ever supposed that they had philosophers or science among them before the Jesuits arrived in the country.

The next circumstance, peculiar to Meroë, is, that the ebony-tree grew there, which is spread all over the peninsula of Atbara, and out of it this tree is not found, (as far as I know) unless a few trees in the province of Kuara, in the low and northernmost part of it; a country, for its intolerable heat, not inferior to that of Atbara, and contiguous to it; but in Gojam, a country deluged with six months rain, this tree would not grow; though so much farther south it is near two English miles higher than Atbara, and is therefore too cold. Such are my reasons for believing that Gojam cannot be Meroë. In my return through the desert I shall confirm this, by proving that Atbara is Meroë, and that we are to look for it about lat. 16° 29´, near the end of the tropical rains.

The Nile, now united with the Astaboras, takes its course straight north for more than two degrees of the meridian; it then makes a very unexpected turn W. by S. considerably more than that space in longitude, winding very little till it arrives at Korti, the first town in the Barabra, or kingdom of Dongola. The river by this time, with three sides, inclosed the great deserts of Bahiouda the road through this from Dereira to Korti (before it was cut off by the Arabs, as it now continues to be) made the fourth side of the square which bound this desert; by this route it was that Poncet and the unfortunate M. du Roule went to Abyssinia.

From Korti the Nile runs almost S. W. where it passes Dongola, a country of the Shepherds, called also Beja, the capital of Barabra, and comes to Moscho, a considerable town, and welcome place of refreshment to the weary traveller, when the caravans were suffered to pass from Egypt into Ethiopia, who, after traversing the dreary desert of Selima for near 500 miles, found himself at Moscho, in repose, in the enjoyment of plenty of fresh water, long ago become to him an indulgence more delicious than ever he had before conceived. From Moscho the Nile turns gradually to the N. E. and in lat. 22° 15´ it meets with a chain of mountains, and throws itself over them down a cataract called Jan Adel, which is its seventh cataract; and, continuing still N. E. it passes Ibrim and Deir, two small garrisons belonging to Egypt. The fall of the Nile in the country of Kennouss, which forms the 8th cataract, and its course through Egypt, are already described in my voyage up the river.

CHAP. XV
Various Names of this River—Ancient Opinion concerning the Cause of its Inundation—Real Manner by which it is effected—Remarkable Disposition of the Peninsula of Africa.

It is not to be wondered, that, in the long course the Nile makes from its source to the sea, it should have acquired a different name in every territory, where a different language was spoken; but there is one thing remarkable, that though the name in sound and in letters is really different, yet the signification is the same, and has an obvious reference to the dog-star.