Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/656

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TRAVELS TO DISCOVER

CHAP. XIV.

Description of the Sources of the Nile—Of Geesh—Accounts of its several Cataracts—Course from its Rise to the Mediterranean.

I hope that what I have now said will be thought sufficient to convince all impartial readers, that these celebrated sources have, as it were, by a fatality, remained to our days as unknown as they were to antiquity, no good or genuine voucher having yet been produced capable of proving that they were before discovered, or seen by the curious eye of any traveller, from earliest ages to this day; and it is with confidence I propose to my reader, that he will consider me as still standing at these fountains, and patiently hear from me the recital of the origin, course, names, and circumstances of this the most famous river in the world, which he will in vain seek from books, or from any other human authority whatever, and which, by the care and attention I have paid to the subject, will, I hope, be found satisfactory here:—

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