Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/567

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THE SOURCE OF THE NILE.
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and there to stay till the south-easter relieves her in November. After you double Gardefan, the summer monsoon, at north-east, is carrying your vessel full sail to Sofala, when the anomalous monsoon takes her off the coast of Melinda, and forces her into Tarshish, where she is imprisoned for six months in the Mocha there. So that this word is very emphatically applied to those places where ships are necessarily detained by the change of monsoons, and proves the truth of what I have said.

The last Cape on the Abyssinian shore, before you run into the Straits, is Cape Defan, called by the Portuguese, Cape Dafui. This has no meaning in any language; the Abyssinians, on whose side it is, call it Cape Defan, the Cape of Burial. It was probably there where the east wind drove ashore the bodies of such as had been shipwrecked in the voyage. The point of the same coast, which stretches out into the Gulf, before you arrive at Babelmandeb, was, by the Romans, called Promontorium Aromatum, and since, by the Portuguese, Cape Gardefui. But the name given it by the Abyssinians and sailors on the Gulf is, Cape Gardefan, the Straits of Burial.

Still nearer the Straits is a small port in the kingdom of Adel, called Mete, i.e. Death, or, he or they are dead. And more to the westward, in the same kingdom, is Mount Felix, corruptly so called by the Portuguese. The Latins call it Elephas Mons, the Mountain of the Elephant; and the natives, Jibbel Feel, which has the fame signification. The Portuguese, who did not know that Jibbel Feel was Elephas Mons, being misled by the sound, have called it Jibbel Felix, the Happy Mountain, a name to which it has no sort of title.

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