THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON OF PTOLEMY'S 

 GEOGRAPHY AND THE RUWENZORI RANGE. 



In Cl.iudius Ptolemy's (leography (Book IV, 

 chap. 8) we read as follows : " At the 

 southern latitude of 12' 30', and l)etweeii 

 the longitudes of 57' and 67", there rises the 

 Mountain of the Moon, whose snows feed the 

 lakes, sources of the Nile." 



As under the latitude specified Ijy the 

 Geographer there is no high land in equatorial 

 Africa that is elevated enough to be described 

 as snowy, and still less as rising above the 

 line of perpetual snows, and as, moreover, 

 a latitude lying so far to the south would 

 place such a high land cpiite beyond the 

 upper basin of the Nile, the suspicion is not 

 without justiticatioii that several geographers have raised that the mention of 

 the -Mountain (or of the Mountains) of the Moon does not come directly from 

 Ptolemy, but is an interpolation foisted into his Geography by some Arab 

 writer. This view is held l)y Cooley, who, in his Pfulcin)/ and the Nile, published 

 in 1854, thus expresses himself: "Ptolemy is a very methodical writer, and 

 divides his Geography into chapters, each describing some natural zone or 

 region, and containing connected information. Had he known that the lakes 

 of the Nile were filled from the snows of mountains further south, he would, in 

 conformity with his general method, have included these ultimate sources in his 

 account of the river. Now the Mountains of the Moon are not mentioned in 

 the chapter which treats of the Nile (^), l)ut in a separate and, as it Avere, 

 STipplementary chapter, containing matters avowedly ol)SCure and little known, 

 and even there they are mentioned not directly, but in an ol)li({ue manner, .and 

 with a very suspicious gloss." ('-) 



Note. — The figures in bracliets in the text i-efVr to tlio iiote^ printed at the end nf 

 this Appendix. 



289 



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