that from very hot places it is not natural that anything should blow,
and that a breeze is wont to blow from something cold.

Let these matters then be as they are and as they were at the first: but
as to the sources of the Nile, not one either of the Egyptians or of
the Libyans or of the Hellenes, who came to speech with me, professed to
know anything, except the scribe of the sacred treasury of Athene at the
city of Sais in Egypt. To me however this man seemed not to be speaking
seriously when he said that he had certain knowledge of it; and he said
as follows, namely that there were two mountains of which the tops ran
up to a sharp point, situated between the city of Syene, which is in
the district of Thebes, and Elephantine, and the names of the mountains
were, of the one Crophi and of the other Mophi. From the middle between
these mountains flowed (he said) the sources of the Nile, which were
fathomless in depth, and half of the water flowed to Egypt and towards
the North Wind, the other half to Ethiopia and the South Wind. As for
the fathomless depth of the source, he said that Psammetichos king of
Egypt came to a trial of this matter; for he had a rope twisted of many
thousand fathoms and let it down in this place, and it found no bottom.
By this the scribe (if this which he told was really as he said) gave me
to understand that there were certain strong eddies there and a backward
flow, and that since the water dashed against the mountains, therefore
the sounding-line could not come to any bottom when it was let down.
From no other person was I able to learn anything about this matter;
but for the rest I learnt so much as here follows by the most diligent
inquiry; for I went myself as an eye-witness as far as the city of
Elephantine and from that point onwards I gathered knowledge by report.
From the city of Elephantine as one goes up the river there is country
which slopes steeply; so that here one must attach ropes to the vessel
on both sides, as one fastens an ox, and so make one's way onward;