6^S TRAVELS TO DISCOVER
hollows, or in any thing that can imprifon and detain iv This is the fine gold of Sennaar, called Tibbar.
The Nile now runs clofeby Sennaar, in a direction near- ly north and fouth ; it then turns fharply toward the eaft, is brim- full and vaftly pleafant in the fair feafon, being in- deed the only ornament of this bare and fiat, though cul- tivated country. From Sennaar it panes many large towns inhabited by Arabs, all of them white people. The Nile then pafies Gerri, and runs N. E. to join the Tacazze, pafling in its way a large and populous town called Chendi, pro- bably the ancient metropolis of Candace *.
If we are not to reject entirely the authority of ancient Iriftory, the iiland of Meroe, fo famous in the firfl ages, mull be found fomewhere between the fource of the Nile and this point, where the two rivers unite ; for of the Nile we are certain, and it feems very clear that the Atbara is the Afta- boras of the ancients. Pliny f fays, it is the ftream which inclofes the left fide of Meroe as the Nile does the right ; and we mull confider him to be looking fouthward from Alex- andria, when he ufes the otherwife equivocal "terms of right and left, and, after this junction of thefe two rivers, the Nile receives or unites itfelf with no other till it falls into the fea at Alexandria.
Much inquiry has been made about this ifland, once a moll diftinguifhed fpot on our globe, the cradle of fcience
and
- Called in the Eihiopic annals Hendaque ; wrote originally, 1 fuppofe, with an X or Ck, i
+ Lib. v. cap. 9. Nat. Hilt,
