ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 129 



Fauteur du Kamous, il paroit que quelques e*crivains ont era que 

 cette montagne tiroit son nom de sa couleur." 



The learned Reinaud, in his recent excellent translation of Abul- 

 feda (t. ii. pp. 8 182), considers it probable that the Ptolemaic inter- 

 pretation of the name, by " Mountains of the Moon" (6p7 tr^^vata), 

 was that originally adopted by the Arabian writers. He remarks 

 that in the Moschtarek of Yakut, and in Ibn-Said, the mountains 

 are written al-Komr, and that Yakut writes in the same way the 

 name of the Islands of Zendj (Zanguebar). The Abyssinian traveller 

 Beke, in his learned critical memoir on the Nile and its tributaries 

 (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, vol. xvii. 

 1847, pp. 7476), seeks to prove that Ptolemy had merely formed 

 his aeKyvys 6poj from a native name, for which he was indebted to 

 intelligence received through the medium of the extensive commer- 

 cial intercourse which prevailed. He says, "Ptolemy knew that 

 the Nile rises in the mountainous country of Moezi ; and in the lan- 

 guages which extend over a great portion of South Africa (for 

 example,, in the languages of Congo, Monjou, and Mozambique), the 

 word Moezi signifies the moon. A great south-western country was 

 called Mono-Muezi, or Mani-Moezi, i. e. the land of the king of Moezi 

 (of the king of the Moon-country), for in the same family of languages 

 in which Moezi or Muezi signifies the Moon, Mono or Mani signifies 

 a king. Alvarez, in the Viaggio nella Ethiopia (Ramusio, vol. i. 

 p. 249), speaks of the * regno de Manicongo/ the kingdom of the 

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

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

 near the Equator, or even south of it (and in 29 E. long, from 

 Paris, or 31 22' from Greenwich), but with Antoine d'Abbadie 

 far to the north-east, in the Godjeb and Gibbe of Eneara (Iniara); 

 therefore in the high mountains of Habesch, in 7 20' N. latitude, 

 and 33 E. long, from Paris, or 35 22' from Greenwich. He 

 conjectures that the Arabs, from a similarity Of sound, may have 

 interpreted the native name Gamaro belonging to the Abyssinian 

 Mountains, in the south-west of Gaka in which the Godjeb (or White 

 Nile?) has its source, to mean Moon Mountains (Djebel al-Kamar); 

 so that Ptolemy himself, familiar with the intercourse between 

 Abyssinia and the Indian Ocean, may have taken the Semitic 

 version, given by early Arab emigrants. (Compare Ayrton in the 



