34 TRUE REASON OF THE NILE'S SWELLING. BOOK II. the Nile has its source, or in that through which it flows, there fell ever so little snow, it is absolutely impossible that any of these circumstances could take place. 9 23. As for the writer who attributes the phenomenon to the ocean, his account is involved in such obscurity, that it is impossible to disprove it by argument. For my part I know of no river called Ocean, and I think that Homer, or one of the earlier poets, invented the name, and introduced it into his poetry. 24. Perhaps, after censuring all the opinions that have been put forward on this obscure subject, one ought to propose some theory of one's own. I will therefore proceed to explain what I think to be the reason of the Nile's swelling in the summer time. During the winter, the sun is driven out of his usual course by the storms, and removes to the upper parts of Libya. This is the whole secret in the fewest possible youth exclaims "Behold the swallow!" The person to whom Herodotus alludes is Hecateus. He mentions it also as an opinion of the Greeks of Pontus, that the ocean flowed round the whole earth (B. iv. ch. 8). That the Nile flowed from the Ocean was maintained by Hecatæus, and by Euthymenes of Marseilles (Plut. de Pl. Phil. iv. 1), who related that, "having sailed round Africa, he found, as long as the Etesian winds blew, the water forced into the Nile caused it to overflow, and that when they ceased, the Nile, no longer receiving that impulse, subsided again. The taste of the water of the sea was also sweet, and the animals similar to those in the Nile." This mistake was owing to another river on the coast of Africa having been found to produce crocodiles and hippopotami. The name "Ocean" having been given by the Egyptians to the Nile does not appear to be connected with the remark of Herodotus, as it is not noticed by him but by Diodorus (i. 96), and Herodotus says he "never knew of a river being called Ocean." We see from Plut. Plac. Ph. iv. 1, that Eudoxus knew that the summer and winter seasons were different in the N. and S. hemispheres.-[G. W.] CHAP. 23-25. THE SUN DRIVEN SOUTHWARD IN WINTER. 35 words; for it stands to reason that the country to which the Sun-god approaches the nearest, and which he passes most directly over, will be scantest of water, and that there the streams which feed the rivers will shrink the most. 25. To explain, however, more at length, the case is this. The sun, in his passage across the upper parts of Libya, affects them in the following way. As the air in those regions is constantly clear, and the country warm through the absence of cold winds, the sun in his passage across them acts upon them exactly as he is wont to act elsewhere in summer, when his path is in the middle of heaven-that is, he attracts the water.' After attracting it, he again repels it into the upper regions, where the winds lay hold of it, scatter it, and reduce it to a vapour, whence it naturally enough comes to pass that the winds which blow from this quarter-the south and south-west-are of all winds the most rainy. And my own opinion is that the sun does not get rid of all the water which he draws year by year from the Nile, but retains some about him. When the winter begins to soften, the sun goes back again to his old place in the middle of the heaven, and proceeds to attract water equally from all countries. Till then the other rivers run big, from the quantity of rain-water which they bring down from countries where so much moisture falls that all the land is cut into gullies; but in summer, when the showers fail, and the sun attracts their water, they become low. The Nile, on the contrary, not deriving any of its bulk from rains, and being in winter subject to the attraction of the sun, naturally runs at that season, unlike all other streams, with a less Herodotus does not here allude to the old notion of the sun being "fed by water," but to the moisture it attracts which is carried by the winds to the S., and then returned in the form of rain by the southerly winds. ... 36 SOURCES OF THE NILE. BOOK II. burthen of water than in the summer time. For in summer it is exposed to attraction equally with all other rivers, but in winter it suffers alone. The sun, therefore, I regard as the sole cause of the phenomenon. 26. It is the sun also, in my opinion,which, by heating the space through which it passes, makes the air in Egypt so dry. There is thus perpetual summer in the upper parts of Libya. Were the position of the heavenly regions reversed, so that the place where now the north wind and the winter have their dwelling became the station of the south wind and of the noon-day, while, on the other hand, the station of the south wind became that of the north, the consequence would be that the sun, driven from the mid-heaven by the winter and the northern gales, would betake himself to the upper parts of Europe, as he now does to those of Libya, and then I believe his passage across Europe would affect the Ister exactly as the Nile is affected at the present day. 27. And with respect to the fact that no breeze blows from the Nile, I am of opinion that no wind is likely to arise in very hot countries, for breezes love to blow from some cold quarter. 28. Let us leave these things, however, to their natural course, to continue as they are and have been from the beginning. With regard to the sources of the Nile, I have found no one among all those with whom 8 2 The sources of the great eastern branch of the Nile have long been discovered. They were first visited by the Portuguese Jesuit, Father Lobo, and afterwards by Bruce; those of the White river are still unknown (see above n. on ch. 19). Herodotus affirms that of all the persons he had consulted, none pretended to give him any information about the sources, except a scribe of the sacred treasury of Minerva at Saïs, who said it rose from a certain abyss beneath two pointed hills between Syene and Elephantine. This is an important passage in his narrative, as it involves CHAP. 26-28. STATEMENT BY THE SCRIBE OF SAÏS. 37 I have conversed, whether Egyptians, Libyans, or Greeks, who professed to have any knowledge, except a single person. He was the scribe who kept the register of the sacred treasures of Minerva in the city of Saïs, and he did not seem to me to be in earnest when 66 Egypt and southwards into Ethiopia. Its course was as well known in his day at Elephantine as now. This, and the fact of his making so much of the Labyrinth, when the monuments of Thebes would have excited his admiration in a far greater degree, have been thought to argue against his having been at Thebes and Elephantine; and any one on visiting Elephantine would be expected to speak of it as an island rather than as a city." It is, however, possible that his omitting to describe the monuments of Thebes, which to this day excite the wonder of all who see them, may have been owing to their having been fully described by Hecatæus. The names Crophi and Mophi are like the unmeaning words used in joke, or in the nursery, by Orientals, at the present day; the second repeating the sound of the first, and always beginning with m, as "fersh mersh, ""salta malta," &c. Crophi and Mophi do not, "bad as has been supposed, signify and "good."-[G. W.} Colonel Mure (Lit. of Greece, vol. iv. p. 387) compares the Crophi and Mophi of the Saitic scribe to the Gog and Magog "of our own nursery mythology," apparently forgetting that the words Gog and Magog come to us from Scripture (Ezek. xxxviii. 2; Rev. xx. 8). The formation of unmeaning or absurd words by means of a rhyming repetition, together with a change of the initial letter, is common in our own language. With us the second word begins ordinarily, not with m, but with the labial nearest to m, viz. b, or with its cognate tenuis, p. Examples of this usage are - hurly-burly, hocus-pocus, higgledy-piggledy, hubbub, niminy-piminy, namby-pamby, &c. In huggermugger and pell-mell, we keep to the Oriental usage, and employ the m. In helter-skelter, hum-drum, and perhaps a few other words, we adopt an entirely different sound. 3 This was one of the great problems of antiquity, as of later times; and Cæsar is even reported to have said: spes sit mihi certa videndi Niliacos fontes, bellum civile relinquam." -Luc. Phars. x. 191. Cp. Hor. iv. Od. xiv. 45 :— "Fontium qui celat origines Nilus." See above, note 8 ch. 19.-G. W.] There 4 The scribes had different offices and grades. The sacred scribes held a high post in the priesthood; and the royal scribes were the king's sons and military men of rank. were also ordinary scribes or notaries, who were conveyancers, wrote letters on business, settled accounts, and performed different offices in the market. The sacred scribes, or hierogrammats, had also various duties. Some, as the one here mentioned, were scribes of the treasury, others of the granaries, others of the documents belonging to the temple, &c. The scribes always had with them a bag, or case having wooden sides, ornamented with coloured devices generally on leather, and a pendent leather mouth tied by a thong to hold the ink-palette with its reed-pens, the papyrus-rolls, and other things they required, which was carried by an attendant slung at his back; but in the house a box was sometimes used in its stead. Lucian says (Macrob. s. 4) they were remarkable for longevity, like the Brachmanes (Brahmins) of India, and others, owing to their mode of life. (Of their dress and duties, see note 1 ch. 37, figs. 8, 9, and woodcut notech. 177.)-[G. W.] 38 CROPHI AND MOPHI. BOOK II. he said that he knew them perfectly well. His story was as follows :-" Between Syêné, a city of the Thebaïs, and Elephantiné, there are" (he said) "two hills with sharp conical tops; the name of the one is Crophi, of the other, Mophi. Midway between them are the fountains of the Nile, fountains which it is impossible to fathom. Half the water runs northward into Egypt, half to the south towards Ethiopia." The fountains were known to be unfathomable, he declared, because Psammetichus, an Egyptian king, had made trial of them. He had caused a rope to be made, many thousand fathoms in length, and had sounded the fountain with it, but could find no bottom. By this the scribe gave me to understand, if there was any truth at all in what he said, that in this fountain there are certain strong eddies, and a regurgitation, owing to the force wherewith the water dashes against the mountains, and hence a sounding-line cannot be got to reach the bottom of the spring. 29. No other information on this head could I obtain from any quarter. All that I succeeded in learning further of the more distant portions of the Nile, by ascending myself as high as Elephantiné, and making inquiries concerning the parts beyond, was the following-As one advances beyond Elephantiné, the land rises. Hence it is necessary in this part of the river to 5 This fact should have convinced Herodotus of the improbability of the story of the river flowing southwards into Ethiopia. That boats are obliged to be dragged by ropes in order to pass the rapids is true; and in performing this arduous duty great skill and agility are required, the men being often obliged to swim from rock to rock to secure the ropes and alter the direction of the draft. After passing the first cataract at Asouan (the an Syene), which is done in about rs, the boat sails unimpeded | 232 miles; a rocky bed of the river called Batn - el-Hadjar, "belly of stone," continues thence about 45 m. to Semneh, after which it is navigable here and there, with occasional rapids, as far as the third cataract of Hannek, below Tombos, about lat. 19° 40'. Beyond this is an unimpeded sail of 200 m. (passing the modern Ordee and Old Dongola) to the fourth cataract, about 18 m. above Gebel Berkel. From thence to the N. end of the isle of Meroe is a sail of about 240 m., the river being open some way further to the S., beyond the site of the city of |