In this manner I bring in the authority of Herodotus, and of the Egyptian priest who informed him of the origin of the Nile, in support of my views respecting the rivers of Abyssinia.[7] It is generally admitted that the Bahr ul Abiad was scarcely known to the ancients; at all events it held but a very inferior rank in any account of the rivers of Africa that has been transmitted to our times. I am, therefore, led to believe that the scribe of the sacred treasury of Minerva, who willingly informed Herodotus of what he knew respecting the sources of the Nile, alluded to the two streams of the table land of Abyssinia, the Abi flowing from the north, and the Abiah flowing from the south; which rivers uniting formed the Assa-abi of ancient days, the Assa-arogue of modern times, and which most certainly was the object of religious worship among the ancient Ethiopians. I would not dare to advance an opinion so directly opposed to the apparently well-considered conclusions arrived at by previous travellers, but that I am convinced that those which they now advocate have been the result of biassed consultations in the closet, where ingenious, but not travelled, geographers have successfully combated the actual results of information derived upon the spot. Krapf, Beke, and Harris, all sent home maps and information, in which the river Gibbee is made to join the Nile, and each have successively given way to subsequent influences. The fact of the Assa-abi, or Assareek, flooding in May, according to the observation of Mr. Inglish, who accompanied the expedition of Mahomed Allee to Sennaar, could not be accounted for by Abyssinian travellers without, in fact, leading the Gibbee, or some other large river, to join the Abi, or Bruce’s Nile, for this latter does not commence to swell before the latter end of June, and could not therefore contribute to the rise of the waters of the Assa-abi in May. This was another reason that should have influenced these travellers to adhere to their Abyssinian information, for no argument that could be brought to bear against it could stand for a moment. But, it has been observed, there is the positive testimony of the Father Antonio Fernandez, who, in 1615, passed over the Kibbee twice in his journey to Enarea and Zingero. To this I answer, that the historiographer of “The Travels of Jesuits in Abyssinia,” F. Balthazer Tellez, so represents it, but not, I think, upon the authority of Fernandez, but merely as an opinion of his own; but asserted with so much positiveness, that it might readily be supposed part of the information which he derived from Fernandez. Compare what Tellez says in his summary of the rivers of Ethiopia--“There is another celebrated river called Zebee, _said to be greater than the Nile itself_, rising in a territory called Bora, in the kingdom of Narea, which is the most southerly, and whereof we shall speak hereafter. It begins its course westward, a few leagues farther