116 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



of the ' regno di Manicongo,' or territory of the king of 

 Congo." Beke's opponent, Ayrton, seeks the sources of the 

 White Nile (Bahr el-Abiad), not as do Arnaud, Werne, and 

 Beke, near the equator, or south of it (in 31° 22' E. long, 

 from Greenwich), but far to the north-east, as does Antoine 

 d'Abbadie, in the Godjeb and Gibbe of Eneara (Iniara), 

 therefore in the high mountains of Habesch, in 7° 20' north 

 lat., and 35° 22' east long, from Greenwich. He is of opinion 

 that the Arabs, from a similarity of sound, may have inter- 

 preted the native name Gamaro, which was applied to the 

 Abyssinian mountains lying south-west of Gaka, and in which 

 the Godjeb (or White Nile) takes its rise, to signify a moun- 

 tain of the moon (Djebel al-Kamar); so that Ptolemy himself, 

 who was familiar with the intercourse existing between Abys- 

 sinia and the Indian Ocean, may have adopted the Semitic 

 interpretation, as given by the descendants of the early Arab 

 immigrants.* 



The lively interest which has recently been felt in England 

 for the discovery of the most southern sources of the Nile in- 

 duced the Abyssinian traveller above referred to, (Charles 

 Beke) at a recent meeting of the " British Association for the 

 advancement of Science," held at Swansea, more fully to 

 develope his ideas respecting the connection between the 

 Mountains of the Moon and those of Habesch. " The Abys- 

 sinian elevated plain," he says, "generally above 8000 feet 

 high, extends towards the south to nearly 9° or 10° north lati- 

 tude. The eastern declivity of the highlands has, to the in- 

 habitants of the coast, the appearance of a mountain chain. 

 The plateau, which diminishes considerably in height towards 

 its southern extremity, passes into the Mountains of the Moon, 

 w r hich run not east and west, but parallel to the coast, or 

 from N.N.E. to S.S.W., extending from 10° north to 5° 

 south latitude. The sources of the White Nile are situated 

 in the Mono-Moezi country,, probably in 2° 30' south 

 latitude, not far from where th6 river Sabaki, on the eastern 

 side of the Mountains of the Moon, falls into the Indian Ocean, 

 near Melindeh, north of Mombaza. Last autumn (1847), 

 the two Abyssinian missionaries Rebmann and Dr. Krapf 



* Compare Ayrton, in the Journal of the Royal Geog. Soc, vol. 

 xviii., 1848, pp. 53, 55, 59—63, with Ferd. Werne's instructive Exped^ 

 zur Entd. der Nil-Quellen, 1848, s. 534 — 536. 



