544- TRAVELS TO DISCOVER
But had the centurions gone to Gojam, they would have pafled a hundred miles of a more verdanc and nioie beauti- ful country before arriving there. The pfittaci aves, or the paroquets, which they very properly obferved were firft feen in Meroe, that is, in Atbara, would have been fought for in vain in Gojam, a cold country ; whereas the paroquet's de- light is in the low, or hot country, where there is always va- riety of fruit ; neither could Ptolemy's obfervation, nor thofe two juft mentioned by Pliny, be admitted, after any fort of jjnodiiication wliatever.
Strabo remarks of the fituatlon of Meroe, that it was placed upon the verge of the tropical rains ; and, with his ufual accuracy and good fenfe, he wonders the regularity of thefe tropical rains, as .to their coming and duration, was not known earlier, when fo many occafions had offered to obferve them at Meroe before his time. The fame author fays, that the fun is vertical at Meroe forty-five days before the fummer folftice ; fo that this too will place that ifland in lat. 16" 44', very little different from the latitude that Ptolemy gives it. From all which circumflances we may venture to maintain, that very few places in ancient geo- graphy have their fituations more flric^ly defined, or by a greater variety of circumflances, than the ifland of Atbara or Meroe. But fuppofing the cafe v/ere otherwife, there is not one of thefe circumflances that I know of, that could be ad- duced with any efFccl to prove Gojam to be Meroe, as Le Grande and the Jefuits have» vainly afTerted.
At half pail eleven o'clock in the forenoon of the 21ft
•of October, having fpcnt the whole day in winding through
- vallies, and the bare hills of the Acaba, we alighted in a
ji wood
