Volume 3 / Book 6 — 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.

Among the Agow, a barbarous and idolatrous nation, it is called Gzeir, Geesa134, Seir; the first of these names signifying God; it is also called Abba, or Ab, Father; and by many other terms which I cannot write in the language of that nation, whilst, with a fervent and unfeigned devotion, under these, or such-like appellations, they pray to the Nile, or spirit residing in that river. The next name it receives is when descended into Gojam, where it is called Abay. Foreigners, of all denominations, not acquainted with the language of the country, have, from hearing it was stiled Ab, Father, by the Agows, or Abai, imagined its name Abawi, a case of that noun, which, in their ignorance, they have made to signify, the Father.

Ludolf, the only one in the age he lived that had any real knowledge of either the Geez or Amharic, was the first to perceive this: he found in neither of these languages Abawi could be a nominative, and consequently could not be applied to any thing; and next he as truly found it could not be of the singular number, and, if so, could not signify one river. He stopped, however, as it were, in the very brink of discovery, for he knew there was no writing or letters in Amharic, which were therefore necessarily borrowed from the old and written language Geez, so that all that could be done was, first, attentively to hear the pronunciation of the word in Amharic, and then to write it in Geez characters as nearly conformable to the sound as possible. Now, the name of the river in Amharic is Abay, pronouncing the y open, or like two (i), and the sense of that word so wrote in Geez, as well as Amharic, is, “the river that suddenly swells, or overflows, periodically with rain;” than which a more apposite name could never have been invented.

By the Gongas, on the south of the mountains Dyre and Tegla, who are indigenæ, the river is called Dahli, and, on the north of these mountains, where the great cataracts are by the Guba, Nuba, and Shangalla, it is stiled Kowass, both which names signify a watching dog, the latrator anubis, or, the dog-star. In the plain country, between Fazuclo and Sennaar, it is called Nil, which signifies blue; and the Arabs interpret it by the word Azergue, which it keeps as far as Halfaia, or near it, where it joins the White River.

The next name by which the Nile went was Siris: Pliny tells us it was called Siris both before and after it came into Beja. “Nec ante Nilus, quam se totum aquis concordibus rursus junxit. Sic quoque etiamnum Siris, ut ante nominatus per aliquot millia, et in totum Homero Egyptus, aliisque Triton135.” This name the Greeks thought was given to it, because of its black colour during the inundation, which mistake presently produced confusion; and we find, according to this idea, the compiler of the Old Testament, (I should suppose Esdras, after the captivity) has translated Siris, the black river, by the Hebrew, Shihor; but nobody ever saw the Nile black when it overflowed; and it would be a very strong figure to call it so in Egypt, where it is always white during the whole of the inundation. Had Esdras, or whoever it was that followed the Greek interpretation of Siris, viz. black, inquired in Beja what was the origin of this name, they would have there learned it imported the River of the Dog-star, on whose vertical appearance this Nile, or Siris, overflows; and this idolatrous worship, paid to the Nile, was probably part of the reason of the question the prophet Jeremiah asks136, “And what hast thou to do in Egypt, to drink the water of Seir? or the water profaned by idolatrous rites?”

As for the first, it is only the translation of the word Bahar, applied to the Nile. The inhabitants of the Barabra, to this day, call it Bahar el Nil, or, the Sea of the Nile, in contradistinction to the Red Sea, which they know by no other name but Bahar el Melech, the Salt Sea. The junction of the three great rivers; the Nile, flowing on the west of Meroë; the Tacazzé, which washes the east side, and joins the Nile at Maggiran, in lat. 17°; and the Mareb, which falls into this last, something above this junction—gives the name of Triton to the Nile.

More doubt has been raised as to the third name, Ægyptus, which it obtains in Homer, and which, I apprehend, was a very ancient name given it even in Ethiopia. The generality, nay, all interpreters, I may say, imagine, as in that of Siris, that this name was given it in relation to its colour, viz. black; but with this I cannot agree; Egypt, in the Ethiopic, is called y Gipt, Agar; and, an inhabitant of the country, Gypt, for precisely so it is pronounced, which means the country of ditches, or canals, drawn from the Nile on both sides at right angles with the river; nothing, surely is more obvious than to write y Gipt, so pronouncing Egypt, and, with its termination, us, or os, Egyptus. The Nile is also called Kronides, Jupiter; as also several other names; but these are rather the epithets of poets, relative and transitory, not the permanent appellation of the river.

I would pass over another name, that of Geon, which some of the fathers of the church have fondly given it, pretending it was one of the rivers that came from the terrestrial paradise, and encompassed the whole land of Cush, whilst, for this purpose, they bring it two thousand miles by a series of miracles, as it were, under the earth and under the sea: To do what? to surround the whole land of Cush. And does it surround it, or does it surround any land whatever? This, and some similar wonders told by St Augustine, have been eagerly catched at, and quoted by unbelieving sceptics; meaning to insinuate, that no better, in other respects, was the authority of these fathers when they explain and defend the truths of Christianity. For my own part, though perfectly a friend to free and temperate inquiry, these injudicious arguments which I need not quote, have little weight with me. St Augustine, when explaining those truths, was undoubtedly under the direction of that spirit which could not lie, and was promised to the priesthood while occupied in their master’s commission the propagation of Christian knowledge; but when, from vanity and human frailty, he attempted to establish things he had nothing to do with, speaking no longer by commandment, he reasoned like a mere man, misled by vanity and too great confidence in his own understanding.

We come now to investigate the reason of the inundation of the Nile, which, being once explained, I cannot help thinking that all further inquiries concerning this subject are superfluous.

It is an observation that holds good through all the works of Providence, That although God, in the beginning, gave an instance of his almighty power, by creating the world with one single fiat, yet, in the laws he has laid down for the maintaining order and regularity in the details of his creation, he has invariably produced all these effects by the least degree of power possible, and by those means that seem most obvious to human conception. But it seemed, however, not according to the tenor of his ways and wisdom, to create a country like Egypt, without springs, or even dews, and subject it to a nearly vertical sun, that he might save it by so extraordinary an intervention as was the annual inundation, and make it the most fertile spot of the universe.

This violent effort seemed to be too great, above all proportion, for the end for which it was intended, and the cause was therefore thought to merit the application of the sublimest philosophy; and accordingly, as Diodorus Siculus137 tells us, it became the study of the most learned men of the first ages, the principal of whom, with their opinions, he quotes, and at the same time alledges the reason why they were not universally received. The first is Thales of Miletum, one of the seven sages, who assigns for the cause the Etesian winds, which blowing, all the hot season, from the Mediterranean, in contrary direction to the stream of the river, force the Nile to accumulate, by obstructing its flowing to the sea, occasion it to rise above its banks, and consequently to overflow the country.

But to this it was answered, That, were this the cause, all rivers running in a northern direction, to the sea, would be subject to the same accident; and this it was known they were not. And we may further add, that were this really the cause, the inundation of the Nile would be very irregular; for the winds at this season often blow from the south-west for two or three days together, and then the inundation would be interrupted. To this it must be added, that a very considerable part of Egypt, and that the most fertile, the Delta, is under the dominion of variable winds, which last long, from one point, at no time.

I shall trespass upon my reader’s patience, on this head, by no more than one additional observation. If the Etesian winds, by opposing the stream, occasioned the inundation, they could effect this no longer than they continued to blow. Now, it was an observation we made when on the Nile, and it was almost without exception, that as often as the Etesian winds blew throughout the day, the night was either calm, or the wind blew gently from the south or east, so that it is morally impossible the river could have overflowed at all, without a much more powerful and constant agent than the Etesian winds:—

Vain, indeed! A philosopher of the present age would be thought mad who should rely on a system so contrary to experiment and observation; though Thales, the propagator of this now mentioned, was so highly esteemed for his knowledge.

The next opinion quoted is that of Anaxagoras, who attributes the inundation of the Nile to snow melting in Ethiopia; and this Diodorus contradicts, for a very substantial reason, that there is no snow in Ethiopia to melt. But supposing all the mountainous part of Ethiopia north of the Line, that is all Abyssinia, were covered with snow, then the inundation must happen in other months, as it must begin in January, for the sun being then within few degrees of being vertical, it must have been the very height of flood when the sun passed over that country in April; whereas its increase is not discerned till about June, when the sun has left the zenith of all Abyssinia, having then passed over Nubia, and is standing vertical to Syene, or as far to the northward as it can proceed.

It is not my meaning to maintain that there never was snow in Abyssinia, as climates have wonderfully changed. In Cæsar’s time, the greatest rivers in the Gaul almost every year were frozen over for months, so that armed nations, with their families, cattle, and incumbrances, passed regularly over them upon the ice without fear; an event that happens not now once in a century. In Prussia138 also were found white bears, an animal now confined to the severest snowy regions of the north; and, what comes still nearer to the present subject, in the inscription found in Abyssinia by Cosmas Indoplaustes, Ptolomæus Evergetes, speaking there, in the first person, of his own conquests in Ethiopia, says, that he had passed the river Siris, and had entered the kingdom of Samen, a country intolerable on account of cold and deep snow.

This account I think almost incredible. Ptolemy parted from Egypt, his fleet coasting along the Red Sea, opposite to his army, and carrying provisions for it; we know, moreover, the time his ships sailed, the beginning of June, when the Nile was overflowed, and consequently of great utility to his army on the first part of his expedition, while he was in Egypt and part of Nubia. Now supposing him to pass the desert as quickly as possible, and come to Axum, it must have been then Summer, or near it; and as it was necessary his fleet should return by the monsoon in October, so it must have then rained continually, and the sun been perpendicular to the country when he found the deep snows in Samen, which is not very probable. The river Tacazzé, moreover, which Ptolemy crossed, was really not passable at that time, and no Abyssinian army did ever attempt it during a flood, though, without, scruple at all seasons they cross the Nile when most deep and rapid.

I remember that when I first ascended Lamalmon, the highest mountain of that ridge, running the whole length of the province of Samen, it was in the depth of winter; the thermometer stood at 32°, wind N. W. clear and cold, but attended with only hoar frost, though at that height, and at that season; the grass scarcely was discoloured, and only felt crisp below my feet, with this small degree of freezing; but this vanished into dew after a quarter of an hour’s sun, nor did I ever see any sign of congelation upon the water, however shaded and stagnant, upon the top of that, or any other hill. I have seen hail indeed lie for three hours in the forenoon upon the mountains of Amid Amid.

The opinion of Democritus was, that the overflowing of the Nile was owing to the sun’s attraction of snowy vapour from the frozen mountains of the north, which being carried by the wind southward, and thawed by warmer climates, fell down upon Ethiopia in deluges of rain: and the same is advanced by Agatharcides of Cnidus in his Periplus of the Red Sea. This opinion of Democritus, Diodorus attempts to refute, but we shall not join him in his refutation, because we are now perfectly certain, from observation, that Democritus and Agatharcides both of them had fallen upon the true causes of the inundation.

I shall now mention a treatise of a modern philosopher, wrote expressly upon this subject, I mean a discourse on the causes of the inundation of the Nile, by M. de la Chambre, printed at Paris in quarto, 1665, where, in a long dedication, he modestly assures the king, he is persuaded that his majesty will consider, as one of the glories of his reign, the discovery of the true cause of the Nile’s inundation, which he had then made, after it had baffled the inquiry of all philosophers for the space of 2000 years; and, indeed, the cause and the discovery would have been both very remarkable, had they been attended with the least degree of possibility. M. de la Chambre says, that the nitre with which the ground in Egypt is impregnated, ferments like a kind of paste, occasioning the Nile to ferment likewise, and thus increases the mass of water so much, that it spreads over the whole land of Egypt.

Far be it from me to bear hard upon those attempts with which the ancients endeavoured to solve those phænomena, when, for want of a sufficient progress in experimental philosophy and observation, they were generally destitute of the proper means; but there is no excuse for a man’s either believing or writing, that earth, impregnated with so small a quantity of any mixture as not to be discernible to the eye, smell, or taste, could periodically swell the waters of a river, then almost dry, to such an immensity, as to cover the whole plains of Egypt, and discharge millions of tons every day into the sea, at the same time that it contributed to the health of the people and the fertility of the land. It puts me in mind of an assertion of M. de Maillet, almost as absurd as de la Chambre’s treatise, that the Nile, which in Egypt is the only fountain of pleasure, of health, and plenty, has a mixture of one tenth of mud during the time of the inundation: pleasant and wholesome stream, truly, to which Fleetditch would be Hippocrene.

But whatever were the conjectures of the dreamers of antiquity, modern travellers and philosophers, describing without system or prejudice what their eyes saw have found that the inundation of Egypt has been effected by natural means, perfectly consonant with the ordinary rules of Providence, and the laws given for the government of the rest of the universe. They have found that the plentiful fall of the tropical rains produced every year at the same time, by the action of a violent sun, has been uniformly, without miracle, the cause of Egypt being regularly overflowed.

The sun being nearly stationary for some days in the tropic of Capricorn, the air there becomes so much rarified, that the heavier winds, charged with watery particles, rush in upon it from the Atlantic on the west, and from the Indian Ocean on the east. The south wind, moreover, loaded with heavy vapour, condensed in that high ridge of mountains not far south of the Line, which forms a spine to the peninsula of Africa, and, running northward with the other two, furnish wherewithal to restore the equilibrium.

The sun, having thus gathered such a quantity of vapours as it were to a focus, now puts them in motion, and drawing them after it in its rapid progress northward, on the 7th of January, for two years together, seemed to have extended its power to the atmosphere of Gondar, when, for the first time, there appeared in the sky white, dappled, thin clouds, the sun being then distant 34° from the zenith, without any one cloudy or dark speck having been seen for several months before. Advancing to the Line with increased velocity, and describing larger spirals, the sun brings on a few drops of rain at Gondar the 1st of March, being then distant 5° from the zenith; these are greedily absorbed by the thirsty soil, and this seems to be the farthest extent of the sun’s influence, capable of causing rain, which then only falls in large drops, and lasts but a few minutes: the rainy season, however, begins most seriously upon its arrival at the zenith of every place, and these rains continue constant and increasing after he has passed it, in his progress northward. Before this, green boughs and leaves appear floating in the Bahar el Abiad, and shew that, in the latitude where it rises, the rains are already abundant. The Galla, who inhabit, or have passed that river, give account of its situation, which lies, as far as I could ever calculate, about 5° from the Line.

In April, all the rivers in Amhara, Begemder, and Lasta, first discoloured, and then beginning to swell, join the Nile in the several parts of its course nearest them; the river then, from the height of its angle of inclination, forces itself through the stagnant lake without mixing with it. In the beginning of May, hundreds of streams pour themselves from Gojam, Damot, Maitsha, and Dembea, into the lake Tzana, which had become low by intense evaporation, but now begins to fill insensibly, and contributes a large quantity of water to the Nile, before it falls down the cataract of Alata. In the beginning of June, the sun having now passed all Abyssinia, the rivers there are all full, and then is the time of the greatest rains in Abyssinia, while it is for some days, as it were, stationary in the tropic of Cancer.

These rains are collected by the four great rivers in Abyssinia; the Mareb, the Bowiha, Tacazzé, and the Nile. All these principal, and their tributary streams, would, however, be absorbed, nor be able to pass the burning deserts, or find their way into Egypt, were it not for the White River, which, rising in a country of almost perpetual rain, joins to it a never-failing stream, equal to the Nile itself.

In the first days of May, the sun, in his way to the northern tropic, is vertical over the small village of Gerri, the limit of the tropical rains. Not all the influence of the sun, which has already past its zenith, and for many days has been as it were stationary within a few degrees of it over Syene, in the tropic of Cancer, can bring them one inch farther to the northward, neither do any dews fall there as might be reasonably expected from the quantity of fresh and exhalable water that is then running in the Nile, though it passes close by that village, and after, through that wild and dreary desert. The fact is certain, and surely curious; the cause perhaps unknown, although it may be guessed at.

I conceive, that mountains are necessary to occasion either rain or dew, by arresting and stopping the great quantity of vapour which is here driven southward before the Etesian winds. Now, all that country between Gerri and Syene is flat and desert, so that this interruption is wanting; and it is owing to the same cause, that the bounds of the tropical rains do stop farther to the southward as you travel westward, and in place of lat. 16°, which is their limits at Gerri, they are confined within lat. 14° in that part of the kingdom of Sennaar which lies south and west of that capital, where all is free from mountains till you come to those of Kuara and Fazuclo.

Yet although the sun’s influence when at its greatest, is not strong enough to draw the boundaries of the summer’s rain farther north than Gerri, all the time that it is in the tropic of Cancer at its greatest distance, these rains are then at their heaviest throughout all Abyssinia; and Egypt, and all its labours, would soon be swept into the Mediterranean did not the sun now begin to change its sphere of action by hastening its progress southward.

From Syene the sun passes over the desert, and arrives at Gerri; here he reverses the effects his influence had when on his passage northward; for whereas, in his whole course of declination northward, from the Line to Gerri, he brought on the rains at every place where he became vertical, so now he cuts off those rains the instant he returns to the zenith of each of those places passing over Abyssinia in his journey southward, till arrived at the Line, in the autumnal equinox, his influence ceases on the side of Abyssinia, and goes to extend itself to the southern hemisphere. And so precisely is this stupendous operation calculated, that, on the 25th of September, only three days after the equinox, the Nile is generally found at Cairo to be at its highest, and begins to diminish every day after.

Thus far as to the cause and progress of the Nile’s inundation in our northern hemisphere; but so much light and confirmation is to be drawn from our consideration of the remainder of the sun’s journey southward, that I am persuaded my following him thither will require no apology to my philosophic or inquisitive reader.

Immediately after the sun has passed the Line he begins the rainy season to the southward, still as he approaches the zenith of each place; but the situation and necessities of this country being varied, the manner of promoting the inundation is changed. A high chain of mountains run from about 6° south all along the middle of the continent towards the Cape of Good Hope, and intersects the southern part of the peninsula nearly in the same manner that the river Nile does the northern. A strong wind from the south, stopping the progress of the condensed vapours, dashes them against the cold summits of this ridge of mountains, and forms many rivers which escape in the direction either east or west, as the level presents itself. If this is towards the west, they fall down the sides of the mountains into the Atlantic, and if on the east, into the Indian Ocean. Now all these would be useless to man, were the Etesian winds to reign, as one would think must be the case, analogous to what passes in Egypt; nay, if any one wind prevailed, these rivers, swelled with rains, would not be navigable, but another wise and providential disposition has remedied this.

The clouds, drawn by the violent action of the sun, are condensed, then broken, and fall as rain on the top of this high ridge, and swell every river, while a wind from the ocean on the east blows like a monsoon up each of these streams in a direction contrary to their current, during the whole time of the inundation, and this enables boats to ascend into the western parts of Sofala, and the interior country to the mountains, where lies the gold. The same effect, from the same cause, is produced on the western side towards the Atlantic; the high ridge of mountains being placed between the different countries west and east, is at once the source of their riches, and of those rivers which conduct to the treasures which would be otherwise inaccessible in the eastern parts of the kingdoms of Benin, Congo, and Angola.

There are three remarkable appearances attending the inundation of the Nile; every morning in Abyssinia is clear, and the sun shines. About nine, a small cloud, not above four feet broad, appears in the east, whirling violently round as if upon an axis, but, arrived near the zenith, it first abates its motion, then loses its form, and extends itself greatly, and seems to call up vapours from all opposite quarters. These clouds having attained nearly the same height, rush against each other with great violence, and put me always in mind of Elisha foretelling rain on Mount Carmel139. The air, impelled before the heaviest mass, or swiftest mover, makes an impression of its own form in the collection of clouds opposite, and the moment it has taken possession of the space made to receive it, the most violent thunder possible to be conceived instantly follows, with rain; after some hours, the sky again clears, with a wind at north, and it is always disagreeably cold when the thermometer is below 63°.

The second thing remarkable is the variation of the thermometer; when the sun is in the southern tropic, 36° distant from the zenith of Gondar, it is seldom lower than 72°; but it falls to 60° and 59° when the sun is immediately vertical; so happily does the approach of rain compensate the heat of a too-scorching sun.

The third is, that remarkable stop in the extent of the rains northward, when the sun, that has conducted the vapours from the Line, and should seem, now more than ever, to be in possession of them, is here over-ruled suddenly, till, on its return to the zenith of Gerri, again it resumes the absolute command over the rain, and reconducts it to the Line to furnish distant deluges to the southward.

I cannot omit observing here the particular disposition of this peninsula of Africa; supposing a meridian line, drawn through the Cape of Good Hope, till it meets the Mediterranean where it bounds Egypt, and that this meridian has a portion of latitude that will comprehend all Abyssinia, Nubia, and Egypt below it, this section of the continent, from south to north, contains 64° divided equally by the equator, so that, from the Line to the southmost point of Africa, is 32°; and northward, to the edge of the Mediterranean, is 32° also: now, if on each side we set off 2°, these are the limits of the variable winds, and we have then 30° south, and 30° north, within which space, on both sides, the trade-winds are confined; set off again 16° from the 32°, that is, half the distance between the Cape of Good Hope and the Line, and 16° between the Line and the Mediterranean, and you have the limits of the tropical rains, 16° on each side of the equator: again, take half of 16°, which is 8°, and add it to the limit of the tropical rains, that is to 16°, and you have 24°, which is the situation of the tropics.—There is something very remarkable in this disposition.