Maria and her two siblings had little interest in the unfamiliar "Kilimanjaro." After all, the Russian Empire spanned more than twenty million square kilometers, and all manner of geographical wonders could be found throughout its territory.
Still, East Africa's bold assertion that Kilimanjaro was the tallest mountain in East Africa was rather novel.
Princess Maria said, "Has the East African government measured every mountain in the country? As far as I know, East Africa should have quite a few towering peaks, and measuring their heights ought to be fairly difficult, shouldn't it?"
Maxim said, "At any rate, ever since I could remember, Kilimanjaro had already been East Africa's tallest peak. That was what the geography textbooks said too. Over the years, no mountain higher than Kilimanjaro had been discovered, and there was no data from elsewhere in Africa showing any mountain taller than Kilimanjaro either."
Geographical surveying was a long, immense, and complicated undertaking. Whether it was measuring a nation's land area, sea area, number of lakes, or the heights of mountain ranges, none of it was simple.
Moreover, as time passed, the data left behind by predecessors could very well be overturned by those who came after them. In his previous life, the Soviet Union had revised its own data on its highest peak more than once.
Prince Maxim also said, "Generally, no one paid attention to where such data came from. In any case, when I was in school, that was how the geography textbooks described it. It was not just Kilimanjaro, either. The empire's largest lake, Great Lake, Lake Victoria, and its deepest lake, Lake Tanganyika—no one knew who had compiled those figures."
"But after all these years, our East African geographical surveys still have not overturned those figures."
This was clearly Ernst's doing. After all, East