Others Pretend A Subterraneous Communication
Between The Ocean And The Nile, And That The Sea Being Violently
Agitated Swells The River.
Many have imagined themselves blessed
with the discovery when they have told us that this mighty flood
proceeds from
The melting of snow on the mountains of Aethiopia,
without reflecting that this opinion is contrary to the received
notion of all the ancients, who believed that the heat was so
excessive between the tropics that no inhabitant could live there.
So much snow and so great heat are never met with in the same
region; and indeed I never saw snow in Abyssinia, except on Mount
Semen in the kingdom of Tigre, very remote from the Nile, and on
Namera, which is indeed not far distant, but where there never falls
snow sufficient to wet the foot of the mountain when it is melted.
To the immense labours and fatigues of the Portuguese mankind is
indebted for the knowledge of the real cause of these inundations so
great and so regular. Their observations inform us that Abyssinia,
where the Nile rises and waters vast tracts of land, is full of
mountains, and in its natural situation much higher than Egypt; that
all the winter, from June to September, no day is without rain; that
the Nile receives in its course all the rivers, brooks, and torrents
which fall from those mountains; these necessarily swell it above
the banks, and fill the plains of Egypt with the inundation. This
comes regularly about the month of July, or three weeks after the
beginning of a rainy season in Aethiopia.
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