Dr. Beke on the Sources of the Nile, 107 



and glosses upon those statements, we should ourselves exa- 

 mine and attempt to elucidate them with the help of the ex- 

 tended geographical knowledge which we possess at the pre- 

 sent day. 



Now, in the 9th chapter of the 4th book of his Geography, 

 Ptolemy describes the eastern coast of Africa as stretching 

 "towards the east from Cape Rhaptum on the Barbarian 

 Gulf, which is also called the Rough Sea on account of the 

 shoals, as far as Cape Prasum ; beyond which the country is 

 unknown." And he proceeds to describe Cape Prasum as 

 being situate in 80° longitude east of Ferro, and 1 5° S. lat. ; 

 and that "near it, towards the north-east, is an island, 

 named Menuthius, which lies in 85° E. long, and 12° 30' S. 

 lat." He adds, that " round the gulf dwell certain cannibal 

 negroes (^thiopes Anthropophagi), on the west of whose 

 country are the Mountains (or hill-country) of the Moon — 

 TO T?79 ^e\rjvq<i 6po<i — the snows of which are received into the 

 lakes of the Nile." And he describes these Mountains of the 

 Moon as lying in 12° 30' S. lat.; the one extremity of them 

 being in 57°, and the other in 67° E. long. 



On testing, by means of the information possessed by us 

 at the present day, the results arrived at by the get)grapher 

 of Alexandria, we are at once struck with the great extension 

 in a southerly direction, which Ptolemy has given to the 

 courses of the Nile and its two great tributary streams, the 

 Astaboras and Astapus, as likewise to the eastern coast of 

 Africa, as far as it was then known. For the correction of 

 this fundamental error our means are two. The one is the 

 positive knowledge respecting the courses of the rivers them- 

 selves, which has been acquired from the recent Egyptian 

 expeditions up the Nile and the explorations of travellers in 

 Abessinia; the other is the like positive information derived 

 from the surveys made of the east coast of Africa, and from 

 the particulars respecting the interior of the Continent col- 

 lected at various points along the coast. 



From the former of these sources of information we are 

 enabled to lay down, with almost absolute accuracy, the course 

 of the Astaboras, now known as the Atbara or Takkazie, and 

 that of the Astapus, Blue River or Abai. From the same 

 source we further learn that in about 9° N. lat. the main 

 stream of the Nile divides into three arms; namely — 1st, the 

 Bahr el Abyad or White River, which has been ascended to 

 about the 4th parallel of N. lat. ; 2nd, the Sobat, Telfi or 

 River of Habesh, which falls into the central stream from the 

 east, and is considered to contribute to the Nile nearly a 

 moiety of its waters; and 3rd, the Bahr el Ghazal or Keilah, 



