in the Mountains of the Moon. 235 



universally and invariably stated by the natives of the coast, 

 that the Juba, Ozi, and Sabiki rivers rise from the main 

 stream of a river which goes to the Nile." As, however, the 

 Ozi was, not many years ago, explored almost to its source 

 by a native chief, as is related by Mr Cooley,* no fact can 

 well be more certain than that this river does not communi- 

 cate either with N'yassi or with the Nile. Nevertheless, its 

 connexion with both is asserted ; and this circumstance un- 

 questionably gives to another native statement, to which I 

 have adverted on a former occasion,! an importance which it 

 might otherwise not be considered to possess. The state- 

 ment to which I allude is that of Lief bin Saied, a native of 

 Zanzibar, but bora of Mono-Moezi (Manmoise) parents, and 

 it is, that " it is well known by all the people there that the 

 river which goes through Egypt takes its source and origin 

 from the lake'^X namely N'yassi ; an assertion w^hich seems to 

 warrant the conclusion, that, if the Nile does not actually 

 flow out of N'yassi itself, its sources are so contiguous to that 

 lake, or to the sources of some of the streams draining into 

 it, as to give occasion to the native opinion that an actual 

 water-communication exists between the two. 



How^ever the fact may eventually be found to be, the ge- 

 neral practical result is much the same. In either case, the 

 head of the Nile is where it has already been placed approxi- 

 mately, namely, at the edge of the high land behind the coast 

 of Zanzibar. And as the Luf idji has some of its sources in 

 the same locality, — it being, in like manner, positively as- 

 serted to flow out of N'yassi, — we have an intelligible expla- 

 nation of the statement of Ibn el Wardi, that the Nile di- 

 vides above the country of the Zimlj, at the mountain of Muk- 

 sim. 



To this identification of the elevated country of Mono- 

 Moezi with the Mountains of the Moon, it may be objected, 

 that those mountains are represented by Ptolemy as running 

 across the continent from east to west ; whereas the general 

 direction of the edge of the table-land of Eastern Africa, of 



* Joum. Roy. Geogr. Soc, vol, xv., p. 207. 



t Tbid., vol. xvii., p. 74. | Ibid., vol. xv., p. 373. 



