KNOWN.
tt p u r ify me.” Many perfons who liv e at a diftance, even the
Mahometans, will caufe -the water to be brought to them in bottles
at a coniiderable price. T h e antient government ufed to'
take advantage o f the fuperftition, and b v impofing a duty on
the facred element raife from it no contemptible revenue.
When pirst T h e time that this riv e r was f i r f t known- to the antients is
not certain. It appears from Strabo, lib. x v . p. io io , to have
been failed up as h ig h as Palibotbra, the- modern Patna. He
fpeaks o f the navigations o f this r iv e r in the plural number,
and confequently that th e y had been frequent. Strabo fays,
th at it rifes in the Indian Caucafus. Mela, more particular,
places its fountain in the Emodpts, and all the antients agree
th at it was the largeft o f all rivers then kn ow n , and that it had
feven mouths, Lucan twice afierts, that Alexander the Great
had the glo ry o f penetrating as far as this river. I prefer the
quotation from th e tenth book, as finely expreifive o f the barbarous
ra ge o f conqueft w h ich poffefled that h e ro .- -F o r the
benefit o f the Englijh reader, I ihall g iv e the beautiful tranila-
tion b y our admirable poet the ill-fated Row. T h e poet, fpeak-
in g o f his tomb at Alexandria, thus begins : .
There the vain youth who made the world his prize,
That profp’rous robber, Alexander lies;
When pitying .death at length had freed mankind,
T o facred reft, his bones were here confign’d :
His bones, that better had been tofs’d and hurl d
With juft contempt, around the injur’d world.
But fortune fpar’d the dead, and partial fate
For azes fix’d his Thar/tan empire’s date.
I f e’er our long loft liberty return,
That parcafs is referv’d for public, fcorn.
Now it ,remains,, a monument confeft
How. one proud, man could lord, it o’er the reft.
To Madefon, a corner of the earth,
The vaft ambitious fpoiler ow’d his birth.
There foon he fcom’d his father’s humbler reign,
And view’d his vanquiih’d Athens with difdain i
Driven headlong on, by Fate’s refiftlefs force,
Thro’ Afia’s realms he took his dreadful courfe :
His ruthlefs fword lay’d human nature wafte,
And deflation follow’d where he pafs’d.
Red Ganges bluih’d, and fam’d Euphrates flood,
With Perjian this, and that with Indian blood.
Such is the bolt, which angry Jove employs,
When undiftinguiihing his wrath deftroys.
Such to mankind portentous meteors rife,
Troubling the gazing earth, and blaft the ikies.
T h e antients inform us, that the Ganges had feven m o u th s ;
at prefent we can - trace only two w ith any certainty. T h e
Hoogly river, and that w h ich is b y pre-eminence called the
Ganges, not mu ch lefs than two hundred miles diftant from
each other. Ptolemy enumerates five o f the mouths b y n am e ;
the Os Cambujium, w h ich I fhould rather g iv e to Hoogly rive r,
than as d'Anville does to the Bratnnec, or wh at h e calls the
Ke^ka; h u t h e gives the name o f Magnum OJHum to the Hoogly
river, becaufe it is at prefent the moil: freq u en ted ; but that
♦ mouth
I t s s e v e n
M o u t h s .