The first European to report seeing Mount…
December 1840 CE to 1851 CE
The sighting is made on December 3, 1849, a year after the discovery of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Krapf is told by people of the Embu tribe that live around the mountain that they do not ascend high enough on the mountain because of the intense cold and the white matter that rolls down the mountains with a loud noise.
This leads him to infer that glaciers exist on the mountain.
It is Krapf who gives the mountain the name "Kenya", but the derivation of this is not known with certainty.
Krapf also notes that the rivers flowing from Mount Kenya, and other mountains in the area, are continuously flowing.
This is very different from the other rivers in the area, which swell up in the wet season and completely dry up after the rainy season has ended.
As the streams flow even in the driest seasons he concludes that there must be a source of water up on the mountain, in the form of glaciers.
He believes the mountain to be the source of the White Nile.
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East Africa
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