114 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



Dialexes of Maximus Tyrius, a Platonic philosopher who 

 lived in Home under Commodus. His Atlas is situated " on 

 the continent where the Western Lybians inhabit a projecting 

 peninsula." The mountain has a deep semi-circular abyss 

 on the side nearest the sea ; and its declivities are so steep 

 that they cannot be descended. The abyss is filled with 

 trees, and " one looks down upon their summits and the 

 fruits they bear as if one were looking into a well."* The 

 description is so minute and graphic that it no doubt sprung 

 from the recollection of some actual view. 



(23) p. 9." The Mountains of the Moon, Djelel-al-Komr" 



The Mountains of the Moon described by Ptolemy ,f ct\i]vrjQ 

 opoe, form on our older maps a vast uninterrupted mountain, 

 chain, traversing the whole of Africa from east to west. The 

 existence of these mountains seems certain ; but their extent, 

 their distance from the equator, and their mean direction, 

 still remain problematical. I have indicated in another workj 

 the manner in which a more intimate acquaintance with 

 Indian idioms and the ancient Persian or Zend teaches us 

 that a part of the geographical nomenclature of Ptolemy con- 

 stitutes an historical memorial of the commercial relations 

 that existed between the West and the remotest regions of 

 Southern Asia and Eastern Africa. The same direction of 

 ideas is apparent in relation to a subject that has very 

 recently become a matter of investigation. It is asked, 

 whether the great geographer and astronomer of Pelusium 

 merely meant in the denomination of Mountains of the Moon 

 (as in that of " Island of Barley," (Jabadiu, Java) to give the 

 Greek translation of the native name of those mountains; 

 whether, as is most probable, El-Istachri, Edrisi, Ibn-al 

 Vardi, and other early Arabian geographers, simply trans- 

 ferred the Ptolemaic nomenclature into their own language; 

 or whether similarity in the sound of the word and the manner 

 in which it was \vritten misled them ? In the notes to the 

 translation of Abd-Allatif's celebrated description of Egypt, 

 my great teacher, Silvestre de Sacy, expressly says, "The 



* Maximus Tyrius, viii., 7, ed. Markland. 

 f Lib. iv., cap. 9. 



Cosmos, vol. ii., p. 559. Bohn's ed. 

 Edition de 1810, pp. 7, 353. 



