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Show 132 STEPPES AND DESEUTS. than Mont Blanc. (Compare Riippell, Reise in Abyssinien, bd. i. s. 414, a.nd bd. ii. s. 443.) Riippell found, adjoining the Buahat, an elevat,ed plain 13,080 (13,939 Eng.) feet above the Red Sea, barely covered with a small quantity of fresh fallen snow (Humboldt, Asie Centrale, t. iii. p. 272). The celebrated inscription of Adulis, which Niebuhr considers to be somewhat later than Juba and Augustus, also speaks of Abyssinian snow 11 that reaches to the knees." This is, I believe, the earliest mention in antiquity of snow within the tropics ( Asie Centrale, t. iii. p. 235) j as the Paropanisus is 12° of latitude north of the northern limit of the torrid zone. Zimmermann's map of the countries about the Upper Nile shows the dividing line which terminates the basin of the Great River, and separates it on the south-east from the domain of the rivers which flow into the Indian Ocean j-that is to say, from the Doara1 which enters the sea north of Magadoxo j from the Teb, which bas its embouchure on the Amber coast, near Ogdaj and from the Goschop, whose abundant stream is formed by the confluence of the Gibu and the Zebi, and which he distinguishes from the Godjeb, rendered celebrated since 1839 by Antoine d' Abbadie, the missionary Krapf, and Beke. These results of the travels of Beke, Krapf, Isenberg, Russeger, Riippell, Abbadie, and Werne, brought together, and shown in the most comprehensive and convenient manner by Zimmermann, were hailed by me on their appearance in 1843 with the most lively joy, as expressed in a letter to Carl Ritter. "If," I wrote to him, 11 a life prolonged to an advanced period brings with it several inconveniences to the individual, and perhaps some even to those who live with him, there is a compensation in the delight of being able to compare older states of knowledge with that which now exists, and to see great advances in knowledge grow and develop themselves under our eyes in departments where all had long slumbered in inactivity, with the exception, perhaps, of attempts by hypercriticism to render previous acquisitions doubtful. This enjoyment has from time to time fallen to our share, yours and mine, in our geographical studies, and this particularly in reference to those very parts of the world which formerly could only be treated of with t.imid, hesitating uncertainty. The conformation of a con- |
