The Sun.
London, England, 1863-05-22 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

TniES:—Nearly two thousand years ago a Roman
poet availed himself of a geographical fact to give
effect to a mythological story. He was desaibing
the confusion produced in the universe when the
horses ran away with the chariot of the Sun, and
he stated, as an incident of the panic, that the river
have
been read Nile fled in dismay to the extremities of the earth,
by
and there hid its head, "which," he adds, "rem +ins
hidden to this
day."
thousands T h
o se
who,verses
probably,o Ov i
d
never gave much thought to the veritable in-
formation which they recorded. Yet we learn from
these few words that in the days of Augustus
not only was the Source of the Nile unknown,
which was not at all extraordinary, but that the
fact of its being unknown was regarded as a wonder,
which is very extraordinary indeed. Why, if we
come to think about the matter, should the Romans
have troubled themselves about the Sources of the
Nile ? They were certainly no such geographers
as to be provoked by the obscurity of a single pro-
blem in the science. Their impressions of the earth's
surface and of the distribution of its territories were
loose and fanciful in the extreme. It is a natural
thing for us to take an interest in such a question,
because we believe that we are acquainted with the
configuration of the globe, and are always ready to
despatch an expedition of discovery to any point
unvisited or unknown. We construct maps of the
bottom of the sea and of the face of the moon, so
that it is not surprising we should be curious about
the course of an African river. But why should
the Romans, who knew not much more of geography
than they did of electricity, concern themselves
about a particular watershed in the mountains of
Abyssinia ? The Nile was a great river, no doubt,
and a sacred river, but other rivers were as great,
and many rivers were sacred. The sources of all of
them were probably alike unknown, but in no case,
except that of the Nile, was this highly natural igno-
rance ever made the subject, of observation or ex-
plained by a special fable. To understand this
anomaly we must go back to early history. The
Nile was not only a great river, but it was an Egyp.
Ilan river, and the land of Egypt was not as other
lands. It was the country of wonders, associated by
its annals and its antiquities, with every form of
civilisation. With this country, too, the Nile was
actually identified—in fact, the river constituted all
the country that was habitable. What, therefore,
Egypt was to the world, the Nile was to Egypt and
to the world also—a species of natural marvel.
The priests of Egypt were learned, they knew that
their great river had never been tracked to its
source, and they communicated this information,
along, with the rest of their learning, to others. So
everybody who had heard of anything had heard of
this, and Ovid turned the story to account, and his
readers accepted the illustration just as if the
source of all the other rivers of the world had been
so regularly ascertained that the Nile remain-
ed an almost miraculcus exception. To com-
plete this story let us add that the very people who
first published the problem are now the most re-
joiced at its solution. The Source of the Nile, it is
believed, has been ascertained at last by the disco-
veries of Capt. Speke and Capt. Grant, and the in-
terest taken by the Egyptians in the announcement
is extraordinary. Ttre Viceroy considers his reign
has been tendered memorable by this success, and
the whole Population are excited by the intelli-
gence. The particulars of the discovery will soon be
made known to us, but it is one of the curiosities of
this most curious subject that what has been dis-
covered is simply what might have been presumed,
or, as we rhay almost say, what has been predicted
beforehand, As the Nile is ascended a mountainous
country is reached' and in these mountains the Nile
clearly originated. That much was known always;
and not much more, except the exact point of the
stream's origin, canbe known now. The story told
by lierodotus is exceedingly simple and natural. He
says that, as to the sources of the Nile, he never found
any man—either Egyptian, or Libyan, or Greek—
who, professed to know where they lay. The
stream, he states, had been tracked a long way
beyond the confines of Egypt, bat it was a stream
still, and the country
above was such a torrid
desert that nobody knew anything about it. In
later •
times a professed geographer placed the
sources of the Nile as he might very safely do, in
what he called the Mountains of the Mcon, and it
seems that the final discovery, if such we may
really term it, has been made by following the route
traced out by Dr. Bake not long ago as likely to
lead to the
a desired spot. "The southernmost limit. of
the basin of the Nile is determined to be four e-
grees south of the P
—uator." That in the words of
Sir▪ Roderick Murchisqon is the great geographical
fact
now ascertained, a'rid, without entering too
nic▪
ely into the intricacies of the problem, we think
we may add that the discovery does but confirm wh at
was generally presumed. A good deal of our curiosity
on this subject has probably come by inheritance. It
was. natural that the ancient Egyptians should take
an interest in the source of a stream which was no-