614 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER
attempt was made, unlcfs they endeavoured to pafs the country of the Shangalla about the end of June or July, when that province, as I have already faid, is absolutely impaflible, by the rapid vegetation of the trees, and the ground being all laid under water, which they might have miftaken for a feries of lakes.
After all thefe great efforts, the learned of antiquity began to look upon the difcovery as defperate, and not to be attained, for which reafon both poets and hiftorians fpeak of it in a ftrain of defpondency : —
Secreto defonte cadem ; qui femper inani §>uacrcndus ratione /diet, nee contigit ulli, Hoc vidijjc caput, fertur fine tcjie crcatus*
Claudian.
And Pliny, as late as the time of Trajan, fays, that thefe fountains were in his time utterly unknown — N'rfus incertis ortns fontibus, it per deferta et ardentia, et immenfo longitudinis [patio ambulant *, — nor was there any other attempt made later by the ancients.
From this it is obvious, that none of the ancients ever made this difcovery of the fource of the Nile. They gave it up entirely, and caput Nili quaerere became a proverb, marking the difficulty, or rather the impoilibility, of any under- taking. Let us now examine the pretenlions of the mo- derns.
The
- Pliny, Nat. Hift. lib. v. cap. 9.
