MOON, MOUNTAINS OF THE

MOON, MOUNTAINS OF THE, have played a mysterious part in African geography since the days of Ptolemy, who indicated them as containing the sources of the Nile. Their exact position was not known; they were generally figured on mediæval maps as a high range crossing the entire continent from Abyssinia to the Gulf of Guinea. As modern enterprise has opened up the interior of Africa, different mountain-chains and peaks have been identified as Ptolemy's Mountains of the Moon—for instance, the mountains of Abyssinia, the groups of Kenia and Kilima-Njaro, the so-called Kong (q.v.) Mountains inland from the Gulf of Guinea, and finally Mr Stanley's Ruwenzori and its fellows.