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THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 71$
This idea, indeed, had fubfifted as long as the royal fa- mily lived in the fouth part of Abyflinia, in Shoa, in the neighbourhood, and fometimes on the very fpot where the attempt was made. When the court, however, removed northward, and the princes, no longer confined in Gefhen, (a mountain in Amhara) were imprifoncd, as they now are, in Wechne, in BelefTen, near Gondar, thefe tranfaclions of remote times and places were gradually forgot, and often mifreprefented ; though, fo far down as the beginning of this century, we find Tecla Haimanout I. * (king of Abyflinia) expoftulating by a letter with the bafha of Cairo upon the miirdsr of the French envoy M. du Roule, and threateningthe Turkiih regency, that, if they perfifled in fuch mifbehaviour, he would make the Nile the inftrument of his vengeance, the keys of which were in his hand, to give them famine or plenty, as they fhould deferve of him. In my time, no iea- Jfible man in Abyflinia believed that fuch a thing was pof- iible, and few that it had ever been attempted. ■
As for the opinion of thofe, that the Nile may be turned into the Red Sea from Nubia or Egypt, it deferves no an- fwer. What could be the motive of fuch an undertaking ? Would the Egyptians fufFer fuch an operation to be carried on in their own country for the fake of ftarving themfelves ? and if the country had been taken from them by an enemy, flill it could not be the intereft of that conqueror to let the inhabitants,, now become his fubjeifts, perifh, and much lefs to reduce them to the neceflity of fo doing by fuch an un- dertaking.
4X2 Much
- See this fetter in the life of that prince.
