THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 5 ^
o? the kingdom; this pafs is always occupied to redacc Gon- darto famine.
The village itfelf belongs to the office of Betwudet, and,, fince that office -has 'been difcontinued, it makes part of the revenue of the Ras ; the language here is Falafha, enough only ufed now by the Jews who go by that name: it was anciently the language of all the province of Dembea, which has here its fouthern boundary. The air of Dingleber is excellent, and the profpedt one of the mofl beautiful in Abyffinia ; on the one fide you have a diftinct view of the lake 1 zana and all its iflands ; on the north, the peninfula of Gorgora, the former refidence of the Jefuits, where too are the ruins of the king's palace. On the north of the lake you have a diftant profpect of Dara, and of the Nile croffing that lake, preferving diitindtly the tract of its ftream un- mixed with the reft of the water, and iffuing out to form what is called the fecond cataract at Alata, all places fixed in our mind by the memory of former diftreffes. On the fouth-eaft, we have a diftant view of the flat country of Maitfha, for the moil part covered with thick trees, and black like a foreft ; farther on the territory of Sacala, one of the di. briefs of the Agows, near which are the fountains of the Nile, the object of all my wiihes ; and clofe behind this, the high mountains of Amid Amid, which furrounded them in two femicircles like a new moon, or amphitheatre, and feem by their lhape to deferve the name of mountains of the moon, fuch as was given by antiquity to mountains, in the neighbourhood of which the Nile was fuppoled tc rife, .
At
