118 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



the rocks, and separate mountains again rise in the land of 

 Bari to the height of more than 3200 feet. These are pro- 

 bably a part of the Mountains of the Moon, as they are given 

 in our most recent maps, although they are not covered with 

 perpetual snow, as asserted by Ptolemy.* The line of per- 

 petual snow would assuredly not be found in these parallels 

 of latitude below an elevation of nearly 15,500 feet above the 

 sea's level. It is not improbable that Ptolemy extended the 

 knowledge he may have possessed of the high mountains of 

 Habesch, near Upper Egypt and the Red Sea, to the country 

 of the sources of the White Nile. In Godjam, Kaffa, Miecha, 

 and Sami, the Abyssinian mountains rise from 10,000 to 

 nearly 15,000 feet, as we learn from exact measurements; 

 (not according to those of Bruce, who gives to Chartum an 

 elevation of 5041 feet, instead of the true height, 1524 feet!) 

 Riippell, who ranks amongst the most accurate observers of 

 the present day, found Abba Jarat (in 13 lO* north lat.) 

 only 70 feet below the elevation of Mont Blanc. f The same 

 observer states that a plain, elevated 13,940 feet above the 

 Red Sea, was barely covered with a thin layer of freshly 

 fallen snow.J The celebrated inscription of Adulis, which, 

 according to Niebuhr, is of somewhat later date than the age 

 of Juba and Augustus, speaks of "Abyssinian snow that 

 reaches to the knee," and affords, I believe, the most ancient 

 record in antiquity of snow within the tropics, as the Paro- 

 panisus is 12 lat. north of that limit. 



Zimmermann's map of the district of the Upper Nile shows 

 the dividing line where the basin of the great river termi- 

 nates in the south-east, and which separates it from the 

 domain of the rivers belonging to the Indian Ocean, viz. ; 

 from the Doara which empties itself north of Magadoxo ; from 

 the Teb on the amber coast of Ogda; from the Goschop 

 whose abundant waters are derived from the confluence of the 

 Gibu and the Zebi, and which must be distinguished from the 

 Godjeb, rendered celebrated since 1839 by Antoine d' Abba- 

 die, Beke, and the Missionary Krapf. In a letter to Carl 

 Hitter I hailed with the most lively joy the appearance of the 



* Lib. iv., cap. 9. 



t See Riippell, Reisein Abyssinien, bd. i., s. 414; bd. ii., s. 443. 



J Humboldt, Asie centrcde, t. iii., p. 272. 



Op. cit., t. iii., p- 235. 



