THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON OF PTOLEMY'S 

 GEOGRAPHY AND THE PtUWENZORI RANGE. 



Ix Chuiiliiis Ptolumy's (ieogniphy (liook IV, 

 chap. S) we read :is follows : " At the 

 southern latitude of 12' 30', and between 

 the longitudes of 57' and 67 , there rises the 

 -Mountain of the Moon, whose snows feed the 

 lakes, sources of the Nile." 



As >nider the latitude specified by the 

 (ieographer thei'c is no high land in equatorial 

 Africa that is elevated enough to l)e described 

 as snowy, and still less as rising aliove the 

 line of perpetual snows, and as, moreover, 

 a latitude lying so far to the south would 

 place such a high land quite beyond the 

 upper liasin of the Nile, the suspicion is not 

 withi)\it justification that si'veral geographers have rai.sed 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 Arali 

 writer. This view is held by Cooley, who, in his Ptuhunij audthi' XUe, published 

 in 1S.")4, thus cxiH'esses himself: "Ptolemy is a very methodical wiitci', and 

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

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

 of the Nile were fillcil 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 rivei'. 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 were, 

 supplementary chapter, containing matters avowedly obscure and little known, 

 and even there they are mentioned not directly, but in an oblique manner, and 

 with a very suspicious gloss." (-) 



Note. — The iij;iuvs in brackets in tlu' ti'xt ivtVi' to tin 

 tluL- Appendix. 



uoters printed at the euil nf 



289 



