Russegger’s scientific expedition—undertaken in 1837 and 1838, in consequence of Mehemet Ali’s eager desire to participate in the gold washings of Fazokl on the Blue (Green) Nile, Bahr el-Azrek—has rendered the existence of a Mountain of the Moon very doubtful. The Blue Nile, the Astapus of Ptolemy, rising from Lake Coloe (now called Lake Tzana), winds through the colossal Abyssinian range of mountains; while to the south-west there appears a far extended tract of low land. The three exploring expeditions which the Egyptian Government sent from Chartum to the confluence of the Blue and the White Nile (the first under the command of Selim Bimbaschi, in November, 1839; the next, which was attended by the French engineers Arnaud, Sabatier, and Thibaut, in the autumn of 1840; and the third, in the month of August, 1841), first removed some of the obscurity which had hitherto shrouded our knowledge of the high mountains, which between the parallels of 6°–4°, and probably still further southward, extend first from west to east, and subsequently from north-west to south-east, towards the left bank of the Bahr-el-Abiad. The second of Mehemet Ali’s expeditions first saw the mountain chain, according to Werne’s account, in 11° 20′ north lat., where Gebel Abul and Gebel Kutak rise to the height of 3623 feet. The high land continued to approach the river more to the south from 4° 45′ north lat. to the parallel of the Island of Tchenker in 4° 4′, near the point at which terminated the expedition commanded by Selim and Feizulla Effendi. The shallow river breaks its way through the rocks, and separate mountains again rise in the land of Bari to the height of more than 3200 feet. These are probably 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.[FA] The line of perpetual 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!) Rüppell, who ranks amongst the most accurate observers of the present day, found Abba Jarat (in 13° 10′ north lat.) only 70 feet below the elevation of Mont Blanc,[FB] 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.[FC] 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