[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Indian literature](https://indike.org/pramana/in) › [Dark Ages](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages) › [Travellers (1500–1858)](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel) › [Histoire de la dernière révolution des États du Grand Mogol](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.bernier) › [Travels in the Mogul Empire (Constable)](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.bernier~en-constable) › 24.6 # Travels in the Mogul Empire (Bernier) 24.6 Travels in the Mogul Empire (Constable) 24.6 - **Language:** English ### [24.6](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.bernier~en-constable.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. - [Previous: 24.5](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.bernier~en-constable.24.5) - [Next: 24.7](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.bernier~en-constable.24.7) - [Up: 24](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.bernier~en-constable.24) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.bernier~en-constable.24.6](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.bernier~en-constable.24.6) · Pramāṇa