The Mountains of the Moon

An ancient “fable” that turned out to be literally true

Ptolemy wrote in the 2nd century that the Nile rose from a snow-capped range in the heart of Africa, the “Mountains of the Moon,” and for seventeen centuries Europeans dismissed it as fable, since everyone knew there was no snow on the equator. Then in 1888 Stanley saw the Rwenzori through a gap in the cloud: real glaciers on the equator, feeding the Nile, exactly as Ptolemy said. The glaciers are now nearly gone to warming. PUBLIC national park, Uganda.