Travels in the Mogul Empire (Bernier) 24: Answer to the fifth Inquiry, concerning the Periodical Rising of the Nile.
Travels in the Mogul Empire (Constable) 24
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Answer to the fifth Inquiry, concerning the Periodical Rising of the Nile.
24.1
I know not whether my solution of this fifth question will be satisfactory; but I shall impart opinions formed after having been twice a witness of the increase, after having given to the subject the whole of my attention, and after making certain observations in the Indies which afford some facilities for the disquisition, which must have been wanting to the great man who has written so ingeniously and learnedly on this interesting topic, although he never saw Egypt but in his study.
24.2
I have already mentioned that while the two Ethiopian ambassadors were at Dehli, my Agah Danechmend-kan, whose thirst for knowledge is incessant, invited them frequently to his house, and that I was always one of the party. His object was to be made acquainted with the state of their country, and the nature of its government. Among other subjects, we spoke a great deal about the source of the Nile, which is called by them Abbabile. They spoke of its source as of a thing generally well known, and concerning which no one entertained any doubt. One of the ambassadors had even seen it, accompanied by a Mogol who had returned with him to Hindoustan. They told us that the source of the river Nile is in the country of the Agaus; that it gushes out of the earth by two large and bubbling springs near one another, and forming a small lake of about thirty or forty paces in length; that the river issuing from this lake is of considerable size, and that in its progress it receives many tributary waters, which swell it to an important stream.
24.3
They went on to observe, that this stream pursues a winding course, and forms an extensive peninsula; and that after descending from several steep rocks, it falls into a large lake, in the country of Dambea, only four or five days' journey from the source, and three short journeys from Gonder, the capital of Ethiopia; that having traversed this lake, the river leaves it, with the accession of all the waters which fall into the lake; passes through Sennar, the chief city of the Funges or Barberis, tributaries to the King of Ethiopia, whence, tumbling among the cataracts, it pursues its way into the plains of Messer, that is, Egypt.
24.4
When the ambassadors had furnished these particulars as to the source and course of the Nile, I wished to form some idea of the situation of the country where the source is found: I therefore inquired in what part of Africa, relatively to Bab-el-mandel, Dumbia is situated. But they could return no other answer than that it lay toward the West. I was surprised to hear this observation, especially from the Mahometan ambassador, who ought to be better informed than a Christian of the relative bearings of places, because all Mahometans are bound, when repeating their prayers, to look toward Meca. He also persisted in saying that Dumbia is situated to the west of Bab-el-mandel; so that the source of the river Nile, according to these ambassadors, is considerably to the north of the equator, and not to the south, where it is placed by Ptolemy, and in all our maps.
24.5
We inquired further of them when it rained in Ethiopia, and whether the rains were periodical in that country as in the Indies. They answered that it seldom or never rained along the coast of the Red Sea, from Suaken, Arkiko, and the island of Masouwa, to Bab-el-mandel, any more than at Moka, in Arabia Felix, on the opposite shore of that sea. In the interior of the country, however, in the province of the Agaus, in Dumbia, and the circumjacent provinces, the rains were very heavy during the two hottest months of summer, those months when it also rains in the Indies, and exactly the time when, according to my computation, the increase of the Nile in Egypt takes place. They were quite aware, the ambassadors added, that the swelling of that river and the inundations of Egypt were caused by the rains of Ethiopia; and that the former country owed its fecundity to the slime conveyed and deposited thither by the Nile. It was from these circumstances, they observed, that the Kings of Ethiopia derived the right of exacting tribute from Egypt; and when that kingdom was subdued by the Mahometans, and its Christian population became oppressed and exposed to every indignity, the Ethiopian Monarch had thoughts of turning the course of the river toward the Red Sea, a measure which would have destroyed the fertility of Egypt, and consequently proved ruinous to the country: but the project appeared so gigantic, if not impracticable, that the attempt was never made to carry it into execution.
24.6
All these particulars I had already been made acquainted with when at Moka, in the course of various conversations with ten or a dozen Gander merchants, sent every year to that city by the King of Ethiopia for purposes of traffic with the vessels from the Indies. The information is useful, as tending to demonstrate that the Nile increases only by means of the rains which fall near its source, and at a distance from Egypt. But I attach still greater importance to my own observations, made upon two separate occasions during the overflowing of that river, because they expose the fallacy of some popular opinions, and prove them to be merely vulgar and idle tales, the inventions of a people much given to superstition, and lost in astonishment at witnessing the increase of a river during the heat of summer, in a country where rain is unknown. I allude, among other conceits, to the notion that there is a certain determinate day on which the Nile begins its increase; that a particular dew, called the Goute, falls on this first day of the increase, which puts an end to the plague, no person dying of that disease when the Goute has begun to descend; and that the overflowing of the Nile is owing to particular and secret causes. I have discovered that this celebrated stream, like other rivers, swells and overflows in consequence of abundant rains, and that we are not to ascribe its increase to the fermentation of the nitrous soil of Egypt.
24.7
I have seen it rise more than a foot, and become very turbid, nearly a month before the pretended determinate day of the increase. I have remarked, in the time of its increase, and before the opening of the irrigation channels, that after the water had swollen during some days a foot or two, it decreased little by little, and then began to increase anew; and in this manner the river augmented or lessened, just according as the rains did or did not fall near its source. The same thing is observable in our Loire; it increases or diminishes in proportion to the rains on the mountains whence that river flows. Once, on my return from Jerusalem, I ascended the Nile from Damietta to Cairo, about a month before the day on which it is said that the Goute falls; and in the morning our clothes were soaked in consequence of the dew that had fallen during the night.
24.8
I supped with M. de Bermon, our vice-consul at Rosetta, eight or ten days after the fall of the Goute. Three of the party were that same evening seized with the plague, of whom two died on the eighth day; and the other patient, who happened to be M. de Bermon himself, would perhaps have fallen a victim to the disease if I had not ventured to prescribe a remedy, and lanced his abscess. I caught the infection, and but for the butter of antimony, to which I had immediate recourse, it might have been seen in my case also that men die of the plague after the descent of the Goute. The emetic, taken at the commencement of the disorder, performed wonders, and I was not confined to the house more than three or four days. A Bedouin servant attended me; he endeavoured to keep up my spirits by swallowing, without a moment's hesitation, what remained of the soup I was taking; and being a predestinarian, he laughed at the idea of danger from the plague. I am far from denying that this distemper is generally attended with less danger after the fall of the Goute. All I maintain is, that the decrease of danger should not be attributed to the Goute. In my opinion the mitigation of the disease is owing to the heat of the weather, then become intense, which opens the pores and expels the pestiferous and malignant humours that remained confined in the body.
24.9
Moreover I have carefully inquired of several Rays, or masters of boats who have ascended the Nile to the extremity of the plains of Egypt, as far as the rocks and cataracts. They assured me that when the river overflows the Egyptian plains, the soil of which is represented as nitrous and fermentative, the Nile is greatly increased between the mountains of the cataracts, which it inundates in a surprising manner, although the soil upon those mountains is not apparently impregnated with nitre. I was also very particular in making the necessary inquiries of the Sonnar negroes who repair to Cairo for employment, and whose country, tributary to the King of Ethiopia, is situated on the Nile among the mountainous tracts to the south of Egypt, These negroes all agreed in asserting, that at the time when the Nile inundates the plains of Egypt, it is swollen and impetuous in their own country, because of the rains which then fall, not only in their mountains, but higher up, in the region of Habeche or Ethiopia.
24.10
The observations made by me on the periodical rains of the Indies, which fall during the time that the Nile is increasing in Egypt, throw considerable light upon this subject, and will lead you to imagine that the Indus, the Ganges, and all the other rivers in this part of the globe are so many rivers Nile, and the countries contiguous to their mouths so many lands of Egypt, Such were the ideas which suggested themselves to my mind when in Bengale, and the following is, word for word, what I then wrote concerning this matter. The numerous islands in the gulf of Bengale, at the mouth of the Ganges, which the course of ages has united together, and at length has joined to the continent, recall to my mind the mouths of the river Nile. When in Egypt I remarked the same process of nature ; and as it is often said, in the language of Aristotle, that Egypt is the workmanship of the Nile, so may it be observed that Bengale is the production of the Ganges. There is only this difference between the two rivers, that the Ganges being incomparably larger than the Nile, it carries toward the sea a much greater quantity of earth ; and thus forms a number of islands more numerous and larger than those of the Nile. The islands of the Nile too are destitute of trees ; but those of the Ganges are all covered with them, owing to the four months of regular and excessive rains that fall in the midst of summer.
24.11
These rains obviate the necessity of cutting canals in Bengale, as is done in Egypt, for the purpose of irrigating and enriching the land. They could indeed be made with as much facility in the one country as in the other, the Ganges and other rivers of Hindoustan increasing, the same as the Nile, in summer in consequence of the rains which regularly fall at that season. There is this difference between the two countries: that in Egypt no rain is known, neither in summer nor scarcely at any other time, excepting occasionally in a small quantity toward the sea. It is only near the source of the Nile, in Ethiopia, that rain falls; whereas throughout the Indies it rains periodically in the countries through which the rivers flow. It should be observed, however, that this is not the case universally; for in the kingdom of Scindy, toward the Persian Gulf, where the mouth of the Indus is situated, there are years during which no rain whatever falls, although the Indus be greatly swollen. The fields are then irrigated, as in Egypt, by means of kalis, or artificial channels.
24.12
In regard to the wish expressed by Monsieur Thevenot that I should send you a detailed narration of my Adventures in the Red Sea, at Suez, Tor, Mount Sinai, Gidda (in that pretended holy land of Mahomet, half a day's journey from Meca), in the island of Kamarane and at Lahaifa, together with all the information which I obtained at Moka concerning the Kingdom of Ethiopia, and the best route for entering therein, it is my intention to gratify that wish when I have had time to put in order, God helping me, my Papers.