106 Dr. Beke on the Sources of the Nile. 



any mountains that could lay claim to this title. A detailed 

 account of the second of these expeditions, being the one which 

 penetrated the furthest, has recently been published by M. 

 Ferdinand Werne of Berlin, who took part in it*. The author 

 states that, according to Lakono, king of Bari, the course 

 of the river continues thence southwards a distance of thirty 

 days' journey, as far as the country of Anyan, where it divides 

 into four small branches. It may not be easy to determine 

 at what rate this distance of thirty days' journey is to be cal- 

 culated ; but if we roughly estimate it at twelve miles per 

 diem (merely as a first approximation), we shall have a di- 

 stance of 360 miles, or six degrees of latitude ; which distance, 

 measured from Bari, carries us to two degrees south of the 

 equator. 



This brings us into the country of Mono-Moezi, of which 

 mention has already been made ; and this (coupled with va- 

 rious other circumstances which it is unnecessary to enter on 

 heref) affords not only a plausible derivation of the name of 

 the " Mountains of the Moon," in which the Nile is, by uni- 

 versal consent, considered to have its origin, but it serves at 

 the same time to determine the position of those mountains in 

 a manner that would seem to be but little, if at all, removed 

 from the truth. 



The " Mountains of the Moon " are an established feature 

 of African geography. All writers, whether Arabian or 

 European, mention them ; all travellers in central Africa hear 

 of them; and yet so indefinite, so various, so contradictory 

 are the statements respecting these mountains, that nothing 

 in the least degree satisfactory has been decided about them. 

 There is however good reason for believing, that all that has 

 been written and said on the subject of the sources of the Nile 

 in the Mountains of the Moon, is founded on the statements 

 of the celebrated astronomer and geographer Claudius Ptole- 

 maeus of Alexandria, who flourished in the second century of 

 the Christian aera. One thing is certain, which is, that he is 

 the first writer by whom the Mountains of the Moon are 

 mentioned; and it is most probable that he derived his infor- 

 mation respecting them from the Greek traders o\ Alexandria, 

 who, from the time of Hippalus's discovery of the monsoons 

 in the middle of the preceding century, if not previously, fre- 

 quented the east coast of Africa. 



Our only sure method of proceeding seems, then, to be, 

 that we should refer back to the original statements of Pto- 

 lemy ; and that, without regarding the numerous commentaries 



* Reise zur Enideckung der Quellen des Weissen Nil. 8vo. Berlin, 1848. 

 f See Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, vol. xlv. p. 221 et scq. 



