THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 605
mined by the inveftigation of the caufe, and the obferva- tions of a feries of years. Before this was thoroughly fet- tled and known, the farmer might perhaps cultivate the plain of Egypt, but would not build there ; he would fix his dwelling on the mountain in defiance of the flood; and that this was fo, is evident from what we faw at Thebes, which the Aborigines did not build, as we fee thoufands of caves dug out of folid rock that were the dwellings of the firft inhabicants, the Troglodytes, beyond Meroe.
The philofophers of Meroe feem therefore to have been the firft that undertook the compiling a feries of obferva- tions, which fhould teach their pofterity the proper times in which they could fettle in, and cultivate Egypt, without fear of danger from the Nile, That illand, full of flocks and fhepherds, under a fky perpetually cloudlefs, having a twilight of fliort duration, was placed between the Nile and Aftaboras, where the two rivers collect the waters that fad in the eaft and the weft of Ethiopia, and mix together in a latitude where the tropical rains ceafe ; this land was too high to be overflowed by the Nile, but near enough to be- hold every alteration in that river's increafe from the in. ftant it happened.
Sirous, the blighted ftar in the Heavens, probably the large ;1, perhaps the neareft to us, in either cafe the mod ob- vious and ufeful for the prefent purpofe, was immediately vertical to Meroe ; and it did not long efcape obiervation, that the heliacal rifing of the dog-ftar was found to be the inftant when ail Egypt was to prepare for the reception of a itranger-flood, without which the hufbandman's labour and expectation of liarveft were in vain. The fields were
dufty
