The Bones Of These Cows Have Already Formed Two
Mountains Of Considerable Height, Which Afford A Sufficient Proof
That These Nations Have Always Paid Their Adorations To This Famous
River.
They eat these sacrifices with great devotion, as flesh
consecrated to their deity.
Then the priest anoints himself with
the grease and tallow of the cows, and sits down on a heap of straw,
on the top and in the middle of a pile which is prepared; they set
fire to it, and the whole heap is consumed without any injury to the
priest, who while the fire continues harangues the standers by, and
confirms them in their present ignorance and superstition. When the
pile is burnt, and the discourse at an end, every one makes a large
present to the priest, which is the grand design of this religious
mockery.
To return to the course of the Nile: its waters, after the first
rise, run to the eastward for about a musket-shot, then turning to
the north, continue hidden in the grass and weeds for about a
quarter of a league, and discover themselves for the first time
among some rocks - a sight not to be enjoyed without some pleasure by
those who have read the fabulous accounts of this stream delivered
by the ancients, and the vain conjectures and reasonings which have
been formed upon its original, the nature of its water, its
cataracts, and its inundations, all which we are now entirely
acquainted with and eye-witnesses of.
Many interpreters of the Holy Scriptures pretend that Gihon,
mentioned in Genesis, is no other than the Nile, which encompasseth
all Aethiopia; but as the Gihon had its source from the terrestrial
paradise, and we know that the Nile rises in the country of the
Agaus, it will be found, I believe, no small difficulty to conceive
how the same river could arise from two sources so distant from each
other, or how a river from so low a source should spring up and
appear in a place perhaps the highest in the world: for if we
consider that Arabia and Palestine are in their situation almost
level with Egypt; that Egypt is as low, if compared with the kingdom
of Dambia, as the deepest valley in regard of the highest mountain;
that the province of Sacala is yet more elevated than Dambia; that
the waters of the Nile must either pass under the Red Sea, or take a
great compass about, we shall find it hard to conceive such an
attractive power in the earth as may be able to make the waters rise
through the obstruction of so much sand from places so low to the
most lofty region of Aethiopia.
But leaving these difficulties, let us go on to describe the course
of the Nile. It rolls away from its source with so inconsiderable a
current, that it appears unlikely to escape being dried up by the
hot season, but soon receiving an increase from the Gemma, the
Keltu, the Bransu, and other less rivers, it is of such a breadth in
the plain of Boad, which is not above three days' journey from its
source, that a ball shot from a musket will scarce fly from one bank
to the other.
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