……. there are five very famous mountain ranges, which form and enclose all the habitable land known to us, with its seas. Two of them enclose it on the north side and on the south side, and the other three form the part of the habitable land between the other two chains, and enclose the seas between their slopes. From this it follows that beyond the equator, by 15 ° south latitude, there is a certain mountain which, over a great length, comes from the west, bounding the ocean and the gulf of the Hesperia (1), and from there it continues to the east, constituting the southern boundary of all of Africa known to us, and from there it continues to the promontory of Prassum (2) up to Cattigara (3), which belongs to the Chinese region, still bounding the South of the Indian Ocean. This mountain, from the place from which it begins to be known on the coast of the western ocean and the Gulf of Hesperia (1), is called Hesperion Ceras, or Horn of Africa, by the Greeks themselves. Then, moving farther east, it is called lon. After that it is called Dauchis (4), then Xiphos, Mesca, Bardetus (5), then it is called Agisymba (6), then, extending to the sixty degree longitude, it is called the Mountain of the Moon. From its northward slopes springs the Nile, which flows into the plain, where they form two huge marshes, from where the Nile emerges, which runs north through Ethiopia to Egypt, on the coast from which it flows into the Mediterranean. But this mountain of the Moon extends further east to 180 degrees longitude; and then it is called Prassus (7), and there it reaches the Indian Ocean at the places where this one begins, and enters a promontory, as well as in the Barbaricus Sinus (8), and then extends farther to the is 110 °, to Cattigara (3), which is a region of the Chinese bounding the Indian Ocean to the south, and extends beyond, through an unknown land whose end is unknown, and thus this mountain limits to the South Africa and all of Asia, and so its beginning and end are unknown, and so high that at the base the fire is produced by the refraction of the sun's rays, especially during our winter, for then the rays fall in this place perpendicularly. But in the middle of these mountains are perpetual snow, which, melting at the equinoxes, fills the swamps. Due to the abundance of the waters of these marshes, the Nile overflows in summer. But at the top of this mountain, there is no rain or wind. And that is why some think that there is the Paradise of delights, because of the prevailing climate. This Prassus Mons (7) up to Cattigara (3) is called Peacons by the Greeks themselves, because at its feet it produces fire, and thunder and lightning still appear in the heart of the mountain.

(1) Hesperia: Africa or the Orient.

(2) promontory of Prassum: Ptolemy’s most southernly point of Africa.

(3) Cattigara: was the name given by the 2nd-century Alexandrian geographer Claudius Ptolemy to the land on the easternmost shore of the Indian Sea.

(4) Dauchis: according to Ptolemy a mountain in Africa.

(5) Xiphos (Zipha), Mesca, Bardetus: these three are mountains in the country Agisymba in Sudan (by Ptolemy).

(6) Agisymba: Land in the Sudan from Ptolemy.

(7) Prassus: Prassum of Ptolemy. See my webpage on Ptolemy.

(8) Barbaricus Sinus: Sea between Somalia and Yemen.