banks. Others pretend a subterraneous communication between the ocean
and the Nile, and that the sea, when violently agitated, swells the
river. Many are of opinion, that this mighty flood proceeds from the
melting of the snow on the mountains of Aethiopia; but so much snow and
such prodigious heat are never met with in the same region. Lobo never
saw snow in Abyssinia, except on mount Semen, in the kingdom of Tigre,
very remote from the Nile; and on Namara, which is, indeed, nor far
distant, but where there never falls snow enough to wet, when dissolved,
the foot of the mountain. To the immense labours of the Portuguese
mankind is indebted for the knowledge of the real cause of these
inundations, so great and so regular. By them we are informed, that
Abyssinia, where the Nile rises, is full of mountains, and, in its
natural situation, is much higher than Aegypt; that in the winter, from
June to September, no day is without rain; that the Nile receives in its
course, all the rivers, brooks, and torrents, that fall from those
mountains, and, by necessary consequence, swelling above its banks,
fills the plains of Aegypt with inundations, which come regularly about
the month of July, or three weeks after the beginning of the rainy
season in Aethiopia. The different degrees of this flood are such
certain indications of the fruitfulness or sterility of the ensuing
year, that it is publickly proclaimed at Cairo how much the water hath
gained during the night."

Such is the account of the Nile and its inundations, which, it is hoped,
will not be deemed an improper or tedious digression, especially as the
whole is an extract from Johnson's translation. He is, all the time, the
actor in the scene, and, in his own words, relates the story. Having
finished this work, he returned in February, 1734, to his native city;
and, in the month of August following, published proposals for printing,
by subscription, the Latin poems of Politian, with the history of Latin