248 Dr Beke on the Mountains forming 
sun.”* Yet this would be incompatible with the statements 
made by the natives to Mr Rebmann, that “ the silver-like 
stuff, when brought down in bottles, proved to be nothing but 
water ;” and that “many who ascended the mountain [Kili- 
mandjaro] perished from extreme cold, or returned with 
frozen extremities.” t 
Or it might be contended that the two lakes, whether or 
not they receive the melted snows of the mountains, do not 
communicate with the Nile. This, however, like the other, is 
only a question of evidence. If Ptolemy was positively in- 
formed (as Captains Burton and Speke were in the first in- 
stance with respect to Tanganyikat) that the two lakes are 
connected with the Nile, he was justified in believing and 
stating them to be so, even should the fact turn out otherwise. 
The most material and interesting point on which an ob- 
jection might be raised, is with respect to my derivation of 
the name of the Mountains of the Moon. It cannot, however, 
be denied, that there is a country named U-Nyamwezi,—or, 
if it be preferred, Monomoezi, as it was generally called till 
within the last few years.§° If this be conceded, and the fact 
also be, as Captain Burton informs us,|| that “ the Arabs and 
people of Zanzibar, for facility and rapidity of pronunciation, 
dispense with the initial dissyllable, and call the country and 
its race ‘ Mwezi ;’” there is nothing unreasonable in the idea 
that the mountains on the way to that country should have 
been called by strangers travelling thither from the coast 
the mountains of Mwezi, just as the northern portion of the 
same range of mountains has of late years been styled the 
* Abessinian Alps” andthe “ Highlands of Ethiopia.” And 
lastly, as ‘‘ Mwezi” means “ Moon,” and the Greeks were in the 
habit of translating into their own language significant proper 
names, these ‘‘ mountains of Mwezi” would naturally have been 
called by them Xeagjvng ogog, the Mountains of the Moon. 
* See “ Journ. Roy. Geogr. Soc.,” vol. xxvii. p. clxx. 
Tt See “ Krapf’s Travels,” &., pp. 543, 544. 
+ See “ Blackwood’s Magazine” for September 1859, vol. Ixxxvi. p. 352. 
§ “Two centuries and a half have elapsed since Hurope first learned the ex- 
istence of the empire of Monomoezi.”’—Cooley “‘ On the Geography of Nyassi,” 
in Journ. Roy. Geogr. Soe., vol. xv. p. 212. 
|| Journ. Roy. Geogr. Soc., vol. xxix. p. 168. 
