Something, likewise, must be imputed to the cataracts, where fish cannot
fall without being killed. Lobo adds, that neither he, nor any with whom
he conversed about the crocodile, ever saw him weep; and, therefore, all
that hath been said about his tears, must be ranked among the fables,
invented for the amusement of children.
"As to the causes of the inundations of the Nile, Lobo observes, that
many an idle hypothesis has been framed. Some theorists ascribe it to
the high winds, that stop the current, and force the water above its
banks. Others pretend a subterraneous communication between the ocean
and the Nile, and that the sea, when violently agitated, swells the
river. Many are of opinion, that this mighty flood proceeds from the
melting of the snow on the mountains of Aethiopia; but so much snow and
such prodigious heat are never met with in the same region. Lobo never
saw snow in Abyssinia, except on mount Semen, in the kingdom of Tigre,
very remote from the Nile; and on Namara, which is, indeed, nor far
distant, but where there never falls snow enough to wet, when dissolved,
the foot of the mountain. To the immense labours of the Portuguese
mankind is indebted for the knowledge of the real cause of these
inundations, so great and so regular. By them we are informed, that
Abyssinia, where the Nile rises, is full of mountains, and, in its
natural situation, is much higher than Aegypt; that in the winter, from
June to September, no day is without rain; that the Nile receives in its
course, all the rivers, brooks, and torrents, that fall from those
mountains, and, by necessary consequence, swelling above its banks,
fills the plains of Aegypt with inundations, which come regularly about
the month of July, or three weeks after the beginning of the rainy
season in Aethiopia.
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