THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 6 S ?
according to the tenor of his ways and wifdom, to create a country like Egypt, without fprings, or even dews, and fub- ject it to a nearly vertical fun, that he might fave it by fo extraordinary an intervention as was the annual inunda- tion, and make it the moft fertile fpot of the univerfe.
This violent effort feemed to be too great, above all propor- tion, for the end for which it was intended, and the caufe was therefore thought to merit the application of the fublimeft philofophy ; and accordingly, as Diodorus Siculus * tells us, it became the ftudy of the moll learned men of the firft ages, the principal of whom, with their opinions, he quotes, and at the fame time al ledges the reafon why they were not univer- fally received. The firft is Thales of Miletum, one of the feven fages, who afligns for the caufe the Etefian winds, which blowing, all the hot feafon, from the Mediterranean, in con- trary direction to the ft ream of the river, force the Nile to accumulate, by obfl.ruc~t.ing its flowing to the fea, occafion it to rife above its banks, and confequently to overflow the country.
But to this it was anfwered, That, were this the caufe, all rivers running in a northern direction, to the fea, would be fubjeit to the fame accident ; and this it was known they were not. And we may further add, that were this really the caufe, the inundation of the Nile would be very irre- gular ; for the winds at this feafon often blow from the fouth-weft for two or three days together, and then the in- undation would be interrupted. To this it muft be added, that a very confiderable part of Egypt, and that the moil
4 O 2 fertile,
» Diod. Sic. lib- i.
