“Equal in fame with the Geographical School of Eratosthenes was that of Ptolemy. This school displays an increase of actual knowledge which was not, however, always accompanied by sounder views respecting undiscovered regions. Ptolemy appears to have been the first who formed a correct idea of the whole course of the Nile, and assigns to its fountains a place in the vast range of the Mountains of the Moon. But he places his Ethiopia interior much further south beyond the equator, nearly in the latitude of Raptum” (Kilwa?).
The Prior of Neuville les Dames et de Prevessin, who published extracts from Father Lobo, the Portuguese Jesuit, launches into a fine dissertation on the Nile, some portions of which are as follows:—
“The greatest men of antiquity have passionately endeavoured to discover the sources of the Nile, imagining, after a career of conquest, that this discovery was only needed to consummate their glory. Cambyses lost many people and much time in this search.”
“When Alexander the Great consulted the oracle of Jupiter of Ammon the first thing he desired to know was whence the Nile sprang, and having camped on the Indus he believed that he had at last succeeded.”
“Ptolemy Philadelphia waged war on Ethiopia with a view to ascend the Nile. He took the town of Axum, as may be seen by the inscriptions that Cosmos Indoplustes has preserved, which he copied during the reign of Emperor Justin I.”