An enquiry into M. Antoine d'Abbadie's journey to Kaffa, in the years 1843 and 1844, to discover the source of the Nile / [Charles T. Beke].

Charles Tilstone Beke

Date:: 1850

Credit: An enquiry into M. Antoine d'Abbadie's journey to Kaffa, in the years 1843 and 1844, to discover the source of the Nile / [Charles T. Beke]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$was acquired by himself in person, during a journey actually made to Enarea and Kaffa, as stated, in the years 1843 and 1844. But this is not all. On his first journey, after having been settled nearly two months at Sakka on the banks of the river Gibbe, which river has since his second journey been made to supersede the Godjeb as the head-stream of the Nile, M. d’Ab- badie stated that ‘‘the Gobe [Gibbe] flows into, the Indian Ocean,and expressed the o^hioh that the Omo, of which the Gibbe is an affluent, “is probably identical with the Djbb [Juba] river, which falls into the Indian Ocean under the Equa- tor.’*2 Such an opinion would, in like manner, have been per¬ fectly reasonable and intelligible as the resufl of oral information obtained in Godjam ; but it is utterly incbnceivable that an mt^ iigent European, who had undertaken such a journey as that alleged to have been performed by M. d’Abbadie for the express purpose of discovering the source of the Nile, should have remained several months on the banks of this river, which he now affirms to be the head of the true Nile, with his eye resting every morning on its source in the forest of Babia,® and yet should not have entertained a suspicion of having there before him what he had gone so far and undergone so much in search of. ^ As some of these objections were, with several others, ad¬ vanced by me in the Athenceund^ as long ago as November 1847, and M. d’Abbadie has since professed to answer them in the same Journal,^ I may give the following specimen of the character of his reply. My Objection. In a letter dated A'dowa, tke 14tli of October, 1844, {Bulletin, iii. 135 ; N. A. des Toy. 1845, i. 264,) written after kis return from Kaffa, M. d’Ahbadie said,— “ J’avais I’intention de vous enYOjer une esquisse de ma carte de Saka d Bong a, avec les lieux a droite et a gaucbe, fixes par renseignement; maisje mens de m^apercevoir que je Vai oubliee d OondarJ’ In Ms present letter of the 5th of August, 1847, he says,—“ In October, 1844, I came dowui from Gondar to the coast of the Eed Sea, in order to replenish my purse, and send a few letters to Europe. . . . My letters were just gone when I attempted, with six observed lati¬ tudes and a great deal of oral information, to His Answer. I am as liable to over¬ sights as many others]' but Dr. Beke ought to have chosen abetter case in order to prove my frailties. In speaking of a map, sketched not in Gondar but in Saka, comprising the country between Saka and Bon- ga, I had said, rather, ambiguously it is true, that I wished to add to it places established by ' Bulletin, vol. iii. p. 54. ^ Ibid. p. 55. ^ See Athen. Ko. 1041, p. 1057. ^ No. 1044, p. 1127. ^ No. 1105, p. 1330.$