THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 713
Lalibala, as we have already fesn, attempted the for- mer method with great appearance of fuccefs ; and this prince, to whom the accidental circumflances of the time had given extraordinary powers, and who was otherwife a man of great capacity and refolution, might, if he had perfe- vered, completed his purpofe, the thing being poflible, that is, no law of nature againft it, and all difficulties are ^nly relative to the powers veiled in thole who are engaged in the undertaking. Alexander the Great would have luc- ceeded — his father Philip would have mifcarried — Lewis the XiV. would perhaps have accomplifhed it, as eafily as he united the two feas by the canal of Languedoc, and with the fame engineers ; but he is the only European prince of whom this could have been expected with any degree of probability.
Alphonso Albuquerque, viceroy of India, is faid to have wrote frequently to the king of Portugal, Don Emanuel, to fend him fome pioneers from Madeira, people accuftom- ed to level ground, and prepare it for fugar- canes, with whofe affiltance he was to execute that ■enterprife of turn- ing the Nile into the Red Sea, and fa miming Egypt. His fon mentions this very improbable ftory in his * father's commentaries ; and he fays further, that he imaginesitmight have been done, becaufe it was a known fact that the Arabs in Upper Egypt, when in rebellion againft the Soldan, ufed to interrupt the courie of the canal between Cofleiron the Red Sea, and Kenna in Egypt.
Vol. III. 4 X Tellez
- A!ph. d'Albucpercpe, Comment, lib. iv. cap. 7.
