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League is a widely found but rarely used unit of measurement, measuring roughly "one hour's hike" in many definitions. It tends to mean around 3 miles, or 5 km, in English use.
Tolkien often wrote distances using leagues. For example, Gimli once described one of his journey's distances as "40 leagues and 2".
What does the 2 mean in this case? Is he simply saying 42?
Yes, 42 :-).
It's an example of an archaism. Tolkien used them extensively in his writings. As this Oxford dictionaries blog article says:
Whatever Tolkien’s intentions and whatever one thinks of Middle Earth or outmoded expressions, archaic language is fundamental to what he called the sub-creation of this secondary world.
Digression:
The combination of 40 with this archaic construction is odd; it's surprising that Tolkien didn't say two score leagues and two. This would have been the more typical archaic way of phrasing it. For example, Lincoln began the Gettysburg address with:
Four score and seven years ago...
and the same format appears extensively in the King James Bible:
The days of our years are three score and ten
Yep, that’s right: the answer really is just 42. :)
