236 Dr Beke on the Sources of the Nile 



which the country of Mono-Moezi forms a portion, is fi'om 

 south to north. But this is an error on the part of that geo- 

 grapher, which it was not only natural for him to fall into, 

 but which, it may even be said, he was bound to commit. 

 From the very general terms in which he speaks of the posi- 

 tion of the sources of the Nile in the Mountains of the Moon, 

 it is evident that his information on the subject was but 

 scanty, and of an indefinite nature. We may with propriety 

 conceive the Sawahilis, or natives of the coast, to have told 

 the Greek navigators and traders who were his authorities, 

 that the Nile had two principal sources ; that one of these 

 sources was in the Mountains of Moezi, situate beyond the 

 country of the Anthropophagi ; and that the other source was 

 in the same ranrje of mountains, at a distance most probably 

 estimated by them in days' journeys, but calculated, either 

 by Ptolemy or by his informants, as being equal to 10 de- 

 grees of longitude, or nearly 600 miles. All this we may 

 well conceive to have been the information furnished to that 

 geographer, it being in substance what is recorded by him. 

 But we may not less readily conceive, that the direction in 

 which those mountains extended was not stated. Now, in pro- 

 ceeding to map these particulars, let us consider what, under 

 the circumstances, would have been done by Ptolemy, or 

 what would indeed now be done by any conscientious geo- 

 grapher, possessed of no fuller or more precise information, 

 and unbiased by any preconceived notions. The position of 

 the one source in the mountains situate to the west of the 

 country of the Anthropophagi being taken as a fixed point, 

 and the other source being understood to lie in the same 

 range of mountains, and at a distance of 600 miles from the 

 former — the direction of the range being, however, not de- 

 fined — there could not properly be any alternative but to re- 

 gard these mountains as running in a dii'ection at right 

 angles (or nearly so) with the main stream of the Nile ; such 

 being, as we see in the case of the Western Ghauts of India 

 and of the Andes of South America, and indeed in that of 

 mountain-chains generally, the relative direction which they 

 bear to the rivers rising in and flowing from them. And as the 



