152 STEPPES AND. DESERTS. 



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 Gama.ro 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 

 immigrants. (Compare Ayrton in the Journal of the Eoyal 

 Geogr. Soc. vol. xviii. 1848, p. 58, 55, and 59-63, with 

 Fred* Werners instructive expedition for the discovery of 

 the sources of the Me, Exped. zur Entd. der Nil-Quellen, 

 1848, S. 534-536. 



The lively interest which has again been excited in 

 England for the discovery of the most southern sources of 

 the Nile, induced the above-named Abyssinian traveller, 

 Charles Beke, at the recent meeting of the British Asso- 

 ciation for the Advancement of Science, held at Swansea, 

 August 1848, to develope more in detail his ideas respect- 

 ing the connection between the Mountains of the Moon 

 and the Mountains of Habesch. He says : " The 

 Abyssinian elevated plain, generally above 8000 feet high, 

 extends towards the south to nearly 9 or 10 1ST. lati- 

 tude. The eastern declivity of the highlands has to the 

 inhabitants of the coast the appearance of a mountain 

 chain. The plateau at its southern extremity passes into 

 the Mountains of the Moon, which run, not east and west, 

 but parallel to the coast, or from NNE. to SSW. ; extending 



