Dr. Beke^s Summary of recent Nilotic Discovery. 261 



of mountains running along the eastern side of Africa from north 

 to soutbj^' '^?m v/:>nyin to bhuk '(a.io ;«io/:t>- iviiivun y;«d o:^ obUj 



To the sotitHward' of klyont the Sfnd parallel of sortth* MtiideV 

 and between the 29th and 34th meridians of east longitude, is 

 the country of Mono-Moezi or Uniamezi — names which may- 

 be respectively interpreted ^^ the king of the moon ^^ and ^^ the 

 possession of the moon ; '' — and in this country, which forms a 

 portion of the table-land, various considerations induced me to 

 place the sources of the Bahr-el- Abyad or White River, the direct 

 stream of the Nile. And I expressed the opinion that the 

 ^' Mountains of the Moon '' of the geographer Ptolemy, in which 

 he places the sources of the Nile, consist of the mountain range 

 of Eastern Africa, which flanks the country of Mono-Moezi to 

 the east, instead of being, as we see them usually marked in the 

 maps, a range stretching across the continent from east to west. 



The direct stream of the Nile, which I thus conceive to have 

 its sources in the mountains of Mono-Moezi, was in 1840 and 

 1841 ascended beyond the 5th parallel of north latitude by the 

 second of the expeditions sent by Mohammed Ali, Pasha of 

 Egypt, to explore its course, and was found to be joined in about 

 9° 20' N. lat. by two principal arms, viz. the Ke'ilak or Bahr-el- 

 Ghazal, and the Sobat, Telfi, or River of Habesh. The former, 

 which joins the main stream from the west, and of which the 

 course is yet unexplored, is apparently the Nile of Herodotus 

 and other writers anterior to Ptolemy. The latter, namely the 

 Sobat, which falls into the Nile from the east, is the lower course 

 of the Godjeb, the principal river of KafFa, which in its upper 

 course is joined by three other streams, bearing in common the 

 name of Gibbe, and draining the extensive elevated districts 

 in the south of Abessinia Proper now occupied by numerous and 

 powerful Galla tribes. Further, the Bahr-el- Abyad or true Nile, 

 and the Sobat or Godjeb, appear to be the two principal arms of 

 the Nile described by Ptolemy as having their sources in the 

 Mountains of the Moon, or the Alpine regions of Eastern Africa; 

 while the Bahr-el-Azrek, Blue River or Abai, and the Atbara or 

 Takkazie, which both rise in the more northerly extension of the 

 same elevated regions, are respectively the Astapus and the As- 

 taboras of the same geographer. 



The foregoing is a brief summary of my views respecting the 

 orography and hydrography of Eastern Africa, from the 18th 

 degree of north latitude to probably the 3rd or 4th parallel south 

 of the Equator, as submitted to the British Association down to 

 the year 1848. I now propose to take a rapid sm-vey of the 

 principal additions since made to our knowledge on the subject. 



At the date of my last communication, it was not known in 

 Europe that the members of the Church Mission in Eastern Africa, 

 stationed at Rabbai ^Mpia, near Mombas, in about 4° south 



