- E.]

The principal lords of Abyssinia informed me, that in their country the winter began in May, and lasted all June and July and part of August, in which latter month the weather becomes mild and pleasant.

In June and July it is a great wonder if the sun ever make his appearance; and in these two months so great and continual are the rains that the fields and low grounds are entirely overflown, so that the people cannot go from one place to another. That this prodigious quantity of water hath no other issue or gathering-place excepting the Nile; as towards the Red Sea the country is entirely skirted by very high mountains. Hence that river must necessarily swell prodigiously and go beyond its ordinary bounds, as unable to contain such vast quantities of water, and overflows therefore both in Egypt and the other lands through which it passes. And as the territories of Egypt are the most plain of these, of necessity the overflowing there must be the more copious, as the river has there more scope and freedom to spread out its waters than in the high and mountainous lands of Abyssinia. Now, it is manifest that the inundations of the Nile in Egypt always begin when the sun is in the summer solstice, which is in June, while in July the river increases in greater abundance, and in August, when the rains diminish in Abyssinia, the river decreases by similar degrees to its former increase.

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