Details
GRANT, James Augustus (1827-1892). Autograph letter signed to Sir Roderick [Murchison], Dingwall, 11 November 1864, 4 pages, 8vo (including an unfinished sentence of 9 words, and a sentence cancelled at the end).
GRANT ON THE NAMING OF THE 'MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON'. Grant writes to Murchison (two months after Speke's death) that his map, 'the last one, will stand the test of all future explorers and I beg you will think me sincere when I tell you not to doubt for one instant any observation made by Speke during the journey, for he was very accurate ... His mountains of the moon as they were drawn in the original maps in a half-moon round the north of the Tanganika are merely an exaggeration of the engravers. They originated not with him poor fellow but in some foreign map made by a German ... He had a good laugh at seeing the words "Montes Lunae" written in the crescent form & took the idea, I believe from this. In the map that we sent home from Egypt I wrote the words Mountains of the Moon agreeable to the form I had seen them in an engraved map & I have a recollection of his having wished me to alter it ... while in Africa no natives knew them by this name which I hope you will able to dissuade people from adopting'. The letter opens with a reference to a discussion of the disputed point of the sources of the Nile on the 14th, which he cannot attend.
Speke's first identification of the high hills at the North end of Lake Tanganyika as the Mountains of the Moon in January 1858 was unsound, both because inaccurate instruments led to his and Burton's miscalculation of the height of the lake, and because Burton could neither confirm nor refute it. The mountains were later correctly identified by Stanley during his Emin Pasha expedition. Speke's second work, What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile and Grant's own book, A Walk across Africa (on which he was working in Scotland) were published in 1864 by Blackwood.
GRANT ON THE NAMING OF THE 'MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON'. Grant writes to Murchison (two months after Speke's death) that his map, 'the last one, will stand the test of all future explorers and I beg you will think me sincere when I tell you not to doubt for one instant any observation made by Speke during the journey, for he was very accurate ... His mountains of the moon as they were drawn in the original maps in a half-moon round the north of the Tanganika are merely an exaggeration of the engravers. They originated not with him poor fellow but in some foreign map made by a German ... He had a good laugh at seeing the words "Montes Lunae" written in the crescent form & took the idea, I believe from this. In the map that we sent home from Egypt I wrote the words Mountains of the Moon agreeable to the form I had seen them in an engraved map & I have a recollection of his having wished me to alter it ... while in Africa no natives knew them by this name which I hope you will able to dissuade people from adopting'. The letter opens with a reference to a discussion of the disputed point of the sources of the Nile on the 14th, which he cannot attend.
Speke's first identification of the high hills at the North end of Lake Tanganyika as the Mountains of the Moon in January 1858 was unsound, both because inaccurate instruments led to his and Burton's miscalculation of the height of the lake, and because Burton could neither confirm nor refute it. The mountains were later correctly identified by Stanley during his Emin Pasha expedition. Speke's second work, What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile and Grant's own book, A Walk across Africa (on which he was working in Scotland) were published in 1864 by Blackwood.
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