6. p. 2—“The desert near the basaltic mountains of Harudsch.”

Near the Egyptian Natron Lakes, which in Strabo’s time had not yet been divided into the six reservoirs by which they are now characterized, there rises abruptly to the north a chain of hills, running from east to west past Fezzan, where it at length appears to form one connected range with the Atlas chain. It divides in north-eastern, as Mount Atlas does in north-western Africa the Lybia, described by Herodotus as inhabited and situated near the sea, from the land of the Berbirs, or Biledulgerid, famed for the abundance of its wild animals. On the borders of Middle Egypt the whole region, south of the 30th degree of latitude, is an ocean of sand, studded here and there with islands or oases abounding in springs and rich in vegetation. Owing to the discoveries of recent travellers, a vast addition has been made to the number of the Oases formerly known, and which the ancients limited to three, compared by Strabo to spots upon a panther’s skin. The third Oasis of the ancients, now called Siwah, was the nomos of Ammon, a hierarchical seat and a resting-place for the caravans, which inclosed within its precincts the temple of the horned Ammon and the spring of the Sun, whose waters were supposed to become cool at certain periods. The ruins of Ummibida (Omm-Beydah) incontestably belong to the fortified caravanserai at the Temple of Ammon, and therefore constitute one of the most ancient monuments which have come down to us from the dawn of human civilization.^[AG]

The word Oasis is Egyptian, and is synonymous with Auasis and Hyasis.^[AH] Abulfeda calls the Oases el-Wah. In the latter time of the Cæsars, malefactors were sent to the Oases, being banished to these islands in the sandy ocean, as the Spaniards and English transported their malefactors to the Falkland islands and New Holland. The ocean affords almost a better chance of escape than the desert surrounding the Oases; which, moreover, diminish in fruitfulness in proportion to the greater quantity of sand incorporated in the soil.

The small mountain range of Harudsch (Harudje^[AI]) consists of grotesquely-shaped basaltic hills. It is the Mons Ater of Pliny, and its western extremity, known as the Soudah mountain, has been recently explored by my unfortunate friend, the enterprising traveller Ritchie. These basaltic eruptions in the tertiary limestone, and rows of hills rising abruptly from fissures, appear to be analogous to the basaltic eruptions in the Vicentine territory.

Nature repeats the same phenomena in the most distant regions of the earth. Hornemann found an immense quantity of petrified fishes’ heads in the limestone formations of the White Harudsch (Harudje el-Abiad), belonging probably to the old chalk. Ritchie and Lyon remarked that the basalt of the Soudah mountain was in many places intimately mingled with carbonate of lime, as is the case in Monte Berico; a phenomenon that is probably connected with eruptions through limestone strata. Lyon’s chart even indicates dolomite in the neighbourhood. Modern mineralogists have found syenite and greenstone, but not basalt, in Egypt. Is it possible that the true basalt, from which many of the ancient vases found in various parts of the country were made, can have been derived from a mountain lying so far to the west? Can the obsidius lapis have come from there, or are we to seek basalt and obsidian on the coast of the Red Sea? The strip of the volcanic eruptions of Harudsch, on the borders of the African desert, moreover reminds the geologist of augitic vesicular amygdaloid, phonolite, and greenstone porphyry, which are only found on the northern and western limits of the steppes of Venezuela and of the plains of the Arkansas, and therefore, as it were, on the ancient coast chains.^[AJ]

7. p. 3—“When suddenly deserted by the tropical east wind, and the sea is covered with weeds.”

It is a remarkable phenomenon, although one generally known to mariners, that in the neighbourhood of the African coast, (between the Canaries and the Cape de Verde islands, and more especially between Cape Bojador and the mouth of the Senegal,) a westerly wind often prevails instead of the usual east or trade wind of the tropics. The cause of this phenomenon is to be ascribed to the far-extending desert of Zahara, and arises from the rarefaction, and consequent vertical ascent of the air over the heated sandy surface. To fill up the vacuum thus occasioned, the cool sea-air rushes in, producing a westerly breeze, adverse to vessels sailing to America; and the mariner, long before he perceives any continent, is made sensible of the effects of its heat-radiating sands. As is well known, a similar cause produces that alternation of sea and land breezes, which prevails at certain hours of the day and night on all sea-coasts.

The accumulation of sea-weed in the neighbourhood of the western coasts of Africa has been often referred to by ancient writers. The local position of this accumulation is a problem which is intimately connected with the conjectures regarding the extent of Phœnician navigation. The Periplus, which has been ascribed to Scylax of Caryanda, and which, according to the investigations of Niebuhr and Letronne, was very probably compiled in the time of Philip of Macedon, contains a description of a kind of fucus sea, Mar de Sargasso, beyond Cerne; but the locality indicated appears to me very different from that assigned to it in the work “De Mirabilibus Auscultationibus,” which for a long time, but incorrectly, bore the great name of Aristotle.^[AK] “Driven by the east wind,” says the pseudo-Aristotle, “Phœnician mariners came in a four days’ voyage from Gades to a place where the sea was found covered with rushes and sea-weed (θρύον καὶ φῦκος). The sea-weed is uncovered at ebb, and overflowed at flood tide.” Does he not here refer to a shoal lying between the 34th and 36th degrees of latitude? Has a shoal disappeared there in consequence of volcanic revolution? Vobonne refers to rocks north of Madeira.^[AL] In Scylax it is stated that “the sea beyond Cerne ceases to be navigable in consequence of its great shallowness, its muddiness, and its sea-grass. The sea-grass lies a span thick, and it is pointed at its upper extremity, so that it pricks.” The sea-weed which is found between Cerne (the Phœnician station for merchant vessels, Gaulea; or, according to Gosselin, the small estuary of Fedallah, on the north-west coast of Mauritania,) and Cape Verde, at the present time by no means forms a great meadow or connected group, “mare herbidum,” such as exists on the other side of the Azores. Moreover, in the poetic description of the coast given by Festus Avienus,^[AM] in which, as Avienus himself very distinctly acknowledges, he availed himself of the journals of Phœnician ships, the impediments presented by the sea-weed are described with great minuteness; but Avienus places the site of this obstacle much further north, towards Ierne, the Holy Isle.

When we consider that the sea-weed (fucus), the mud or slime (πηλὸς), the shallowness of the sea, and the perpetual calms, are always regarded by the ancients as characteristic of the Western Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules, we feel inclined, especially on account of the reference to the calms, to ascribe this to Punic cunning, to the tendency of a great trading people to hinder others, by terrific descriptions, from competing with them in maritime trading westwards. But even in the genuine writings of the Stagyrite,^[AN] the same opinion is retained regarding the absence of wind, and Aristotle attempts to explain a false notion, or, as it seems to me, more correctly speaking, a fabulous mariner’s story, by an hypothesis regarding the depth of the sea. The stormy sea between Gades and the Islands of the Blest (Cadiz and the Canaries) can in truth in no way be compared with the sea, which lies between the tropics, ruffled only by the gentle trade-winds (vents alisés), and which has been very characteristically named by the Spaniards^[AO] El Golfo de las Damas.

From very careful personal researches and from comparison of the logs of many English and French vessels, I am led to believe that the old and very indefinite expression Mar de Sargasso, refers to two fucus banks, the larger of which is of an elongated form, and is the easternmost one, lying between the parallels of 19° and 34°, in a meridian 7° westward of the Island of Corvo, one of the Azores; while the smaller and westernmost bank is of a roundish form, and is found between Bermuda and the Bahama Islands (lat. 25°–31°, long. 66°–74°). The principal diameter of the small bank, which is traversed by ships sailing from Baxo de Plata (Caye d’Argent,) northward of St. Domingo to the Bermudas, appears to me to have a N. 60° E. direction. A transverse band of fucus natans, extending in an east-westerly direction between the latitudes of 25° and 30°, connects the greater with the smaller bank. I have had the pleasure of seeing these views adopted by my lamented friend Major Rennell, and confirmed, in his great work on Currents, by many new observations.^[AP] The two groups of sea-weed, together with the transverse band uniting them, constitute the Sargasso Sea of the older writers, and collectively occupy an area equal to six or seven times that of Germany.

The vegetation of the ocean thus offers the most remarkable example of social plants of a single species. On the main land the Savannahs or grass plains of America, the heaths (ericeta), and the forests of Northern Europe and Asia, in which are associated coniferous trees, birches, and willows, produce a less striking uniformity than do these thalassophytes. Our heaths present in the north not only the predominating Calluna vulgaris, but also Erica tetralix, E. ciliaris, and E. cinerea; and in the south, Erica arborea, E. scoparia, and E. Mediterranea. The uniformity of the view presented by the Fucus natans is incomparably greater than that of any other assemblage of social plants. Oviedo calls the fucus banks “meadows,” praderias de yerva. If we consider that Pedro Velasco, a native of the Spanish harbour of Palos, by following the flight of certain birds from Fayal, discovered the Island of Flores as early as 1452, it seems almost impossible, considering the proximity of the great fucus bank of Corvo and Flores, that no part of these oceanic meadows should have been seen before the time of Columbus by Portuguese ships driven westward by storms.

We learn, however, from the astonishment of the companions of the admiral, when they were continuously surrounded by sea-grass from the 16th of September to the 8th of October, 1492, that the magnitude of the phenomenon was at that period unknown to mariners. In the extracts from the ship’s journal given by Las Casas, Columbus certainly does not mention the apprehensions which the accumulation of sea-weed excited, or the grumbling of his companions. He merely speaks of the complaints and murmurs regarding the danger of the very weak but constant east winds. It was only his son, Fernando Colon, who in the history of his father’s life, endeavoured to give a somewhat dramatic delineation of the anxieties of the sailors.

According to my researches, Columbus made his way through the great fucus bank in the year 1492, in latitude 28½°, and in 1493, in latitude 37°, and both times in the longitude of 38°–41°. This can be established with tolerable certainty from the estimation of the velocity recorded by Columbus, and “the distance daily sailed over;” not indeed by dropping the log, but by the information afforded by the running out of half-hour sand-glasses (ampolletas). The first certain and distinct account of the log, (catena della poppa,) which I have found, is in the year 1521, in Pigafetta’s Journal of Magellan’s Circumnavigation of the World.^[AQ] The determination of the ship’s place during the days in which Columbus was crossing the great bank is the more important, because it shews us that for three centuries and a half the total accumulation of these socially-living thalassophytes, (whether consequent on the local character of the sea’s bottom or on the direction of the recurrent Gulf stream,) has remained at the same point. Such evidences of the persistence of great natural phenomena doubly arrest the attention of the natural philosopher, when they occur in the ever-moving oceanic element. Although the limits of the fucus banks oscillate considerably, in accordance with the strength and direction of long predominating winds, yet we may still, in the middle of the nineteenth century, take the meridian of 41° west of Paris (or 8° 38′ west of Greenwich) as the principal axis of the great bank. Columbus, with his vivid imaginative force, associated the idea of the position of this bank with the great physical line of demarcation, which according to him, “separated the globe into two parts, and was intimately connected with the changes of magnetic deviation and of climatic relations.” Columbus when he was uncertain regarding the longitude, attempted to determine his place (February, 1493,) by the appearance of the first floating masses of tangled weed (de la primera yerva) on the eastern border of the great Corvo bank. The physical line of demarcation was, by the powerful influence of the Admiral, converted on the 4th of May, 1493, into a political one, in the celebrated line of demarcation between the Spanish and Portuguese rights of possession^[AR].

8. p. 3—“The Nomadic Tribes of Tibbos and Tuaryks.”

These two nations, which inhabit the desert between Bornou, Fezzan, and Lower Egypt, were first made more accurately known to us by the travels of Hornemann and Lyon. The Tibbos or Tibbous occupy the eastern, and the Tuaryks (Tueregs) the western portion of the great sandy ocean. The former, from their habits of constant moving, were named by the other tribes “birds.” The Tuaryks are subdivided into two tribes—the Aghadez and the Tagazi. These are often caravan leaders and merchants. They speak the same language as the Berbers, and undoubtedly belong to the primitive Lybian races. They present the remarkable physiological phenomenon that, according to the character of the climate, the different tribes vary in complexion from a white to a yellow, or even almost black hue; but they never have woolly hair or negro features.^[AS]

9. p. 3—“The ship of the desert.”

In the poetry of the East, the camel is designated as the land-ship, or the ship of the desert (Sefynet-el-badyet^[AT]).

The camel is, however, not only the carrier in the desert, and the medium for maintaining communication between different countries, but is also, as Carl Bitter has shown in his admirable treatise on the sphere of distribution of this animal, “the main requirement of a nomadic mode of life in the patriarchal stage of national development, in the torrid regions of our planet, where rain is either wholly or in a great degree absent. No animal’s life is so closely associated by natural bonds with a certain primitive stage of the development of the life of man, as that of the camel among the Bedouin tribes, nor has any other been established in like manner by a continuous historical evidence of several thousand years.”^[AU] “The camel was entirely unknown to the cultivated people of Carthage through all the centuries of their flourishing existence, until the destruction of the city. It was first brought into use for armies by the Marusians, in Western Lybia, in the times of the Cæsars; perhaps in consequence of its employment in commercial undertakings by the Ptolemies, in the valley of the Nile. The Guanches, inhabiting the Canary Islands, who were probably related to the Berber race, were not acquainted with the camel before the fifteenth century, when it was introduced by Norman conquerors and settlers. In the probably very limited communication of the Guanches with the coast of Africa, the smallness of their boats must necessarily have impeded the transport of large animals. The true Berber race, which was diffused throughout the interior of Northern Africa, and to which the Tibbos and Tuaryks, as already observed, belong, is probably indebted to the use of the camel throughout the Lybian desert and its oases, not only for the advantages of internal communication, but also for its escape from complete annihilation and for the maintenance of its national existence to the present day. The use of the camel continued, on the other hand, to be unknown to the negro races, and it was only in company with the conquering expeditions and proselyting missions of the Bedouins through the whole of Northern Africa, that the useful animal of the Nedschd, of the Nabatheans, and of all the districts occupied by Aramean races, spread here, as elsewhere, to the westward. The Goths brought camels as early as the fourth century to the Lower Istros (the Danube), and the Ghaznevides transported them in much larger numbers to India as far as the banks of the Ganges.” We must distinguish two epochs in the distribution of the camel throughout the northern part of the African continent; the first under the Ptolemies, which operated through Cyrene on the whole of the north-west of Africa, and the second under the Mahommedan epoch of the conquering Arabs.

It has long been a matter of discussion, whether those domestic animals which were the earliest companions of mankind, as oxen, sheep, dogs, and camels, are still to be met with in a state of original wildness. The Hiongnu, in Eastern Asia, are among the nations who earliest trained wild camels as domestic animals. The compiler of the great Chinese work, Si-yu-wen-kien-lo^[AV], states that in the middle of the eighteenth century, wild camels, as well as wild horses and wild asses, still roamed over Eastern Turkestan. Hadji Chalfa, in his Turkish Geography, written in the seventeenth century, speaks of the very frequent hunting of the wild camel in the high plains of Kashgar, Turfan, and Khotan. Schott finds in the writings of a Chinese author, Ma-dschi, that wild camels exist in the countries north of China and west of the basin of the Hoang-ho, in Ho-si or Tangut. Cuvier^[AW] alone doubts the present existence of wild camels in the interior of Asia. He believes that they have merely “become wild;” since Calmucks, and others professing kindred Buddhist doctrines, set camels and other animals at liberty, in order “to acquire to themselves merit for the other world.” The Ailanitic Gulf of the Nabatheans was the home of the wild Arabian camel, according to Greek witnesses of the times of Artemidorus and Agatharchides of Cnidus.^[AX] The discovery of fossil camel-bones of the ancient world in the Sewalik hills (which are projecting spurs of the Himalaya range), by Captain Cautley and Dr. Falconer, in 1834, is especially worthy of notice. These remains were found with antediluvian bones of mastodons, true elephants, giraffes, and a gigantic land tortoise (Colossochelys), twelve feet in length and six feet in height.^[AY] This camel of the ancient world has been named Camelus sivalensis, although it does not show any great difference from the still living Egyptian and Bactrian camels with one and two humps. Forty camels have very recently been introduced into Java, from Teneriffe^[AZ]. The first experiment has been made in Samarang. In like manner, reindeer were only introduced into Iceland from Norway in the course of the last century. They were not found there when the island was first colonised, notwithstanding its proximity to East Greenland, and the existence of floating masses of ice.^[BA]

10. p. 3—“Between the Altai and the Kuen-lün.”

The great highland, or, as it is commonly called, the mountain plateau of Asia, which comprises the lesser Bucharia, Songaria, Thibet, Tangut, and the Mogul country of the Chalcas and Olotes, is situated between the 36th and 48th degrees of north latitude and the meridians of 81° and 118° E. long. It is an erroneous idea to represent this part of the interior of Asia as a single, undivided mountainous swelling, continuous like the plateaux of Quito and Mexico, and situated from seven to upwards of nine thousand feet above the level of the sea. I have already shown in my “Researches respecting the Mountains of Northern India,^[BB]” that there is not in this sense any continuous mountain plateau in the interior of Asia.

My views concerning the geographical distribution of plants, and the mean degree of temperature requisite for certain kinds of cultivation, had early led me to entertain considerable doubts regarding the continuity of a great Tartarian plateau between the Himalaya and the chain of the Altai. This plateau continued to be characterized, as it had been described by Hippocrates, as “the high and naked plains of Scythia, which, without being crowned with mountains, rise and extend to beneath the constellation of the Bear.”^[BC] Klaproth has the undeniable merit of having been the first to make us acquainted with the true position and prolongation of two great and entirely distinct chains of mountains,—the Kuen-lün and the Thian-schan, in a part of Asia which better deserves to be termed “central,” than Kashmeer, Baltistan, and the Sacred Lakes of Thibet (the Manasa and the Ravanahrada). The importance of the Celestial Mountains (the Thian-schan) had indeed been already surmised by Pallas, without his being conscious of their volcanic character; but this highly-gifted investigator of nature, led astray by the hypotheses of the dogmatic and fantastic geology prevalent in his time, and firmly believing in “chains of mountains radiating from a centre,” saw in the Bogdo Oola (the Mons Augustus, or culminating point of the Thian-schan,) such “a central node, whence all the other Asiatic mountain chains diverge in rays, and which dominates over all the rest of the continent!”

The erroneous idea of a single boundless and elevated plain, occupying the whole of Central Asia, the “Plateau de la Tartarie,” originated in France, in the latter half of the eighteenth century. It was the result of historical combinations, and of a not sufficiently attentive study of the writings of the celebrated Venetian traveller, as well as of the naïve relations of those diplomatic monks who, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (thanks to the unity and extent of the Mogul empire at that time), were able to traverse almost the whole of the interior of the continent, from the ports of Syria and of the Caspian Sea to the east coast of China, washed by the great ocean. If a more exact acquaintance with the language and ancient literature of India were of an older date among us than half a century, the hypothesis of this central plateau, occupying the wide space between the Himalaya and the south of Siberia, would no doubt have sought support from some ancient and venerable authority. The poem of the Mahabharata appears, in the geographical fragment Bhischmakanda, to describe “Meru” not so much as a mountain as an enormous swelling of the land, which supplies with water the sources of the Ganges, those of the Bhadrasoma (Irtysch), and those of the forked Oxus. These physico-geographical views were intermingled in Europe with ideas of other kinds, and with mythical reveries on the origin of mankind. The lofty regions from which the waters were supposed to have first retreated (for geologists in general were long averse to the theories of elevation) must also have received the first germs of civilization. Hebraic systems of geology, based on ideas of a deluge, and supported by local traditions, favoured these assumptions. The intimate connexion between time and space, between the beginning of social order and the plastic condition of the surface of the earth, lent a peculiar importance and an almost moral interest to the Plateau of Tartary, which was supposed to be characterized by uninterrupted continuity. Acquisitions of positive knowledge,—the late matured fruit of scientific travels and direct measurements,—with a fundamental study of the languages and literature of Asia, and more especially of China, have gradually demonstrated the inaccuracy and exaggeration of those wild hypotheses. The mountain plains (ὀροπέδια) of Central Asia are no longer regarded as the cradle of human civilization, and the primitive seat of all arts and sciences. The ancient nation of Bailly’s Atlantis, which d’Alembert has happily described as “having taught us everything but its own name and existence,” has vanished. The inhabitants of the Oceanic Atlantis were already treated, in the time of Posidonius, as having a merely apocryphal existence.^[BD]

A plateau of considerable but very unequal elevation runs with little interruption, in a S.S.W.-N.N.E. direction, from Eastern Thibet towards the mountain node of Kentei, south of Lake Baikal, and is known by the names of Gobi, Scha-mo, (sand desert,) Scha-ho. (sand river,) and Han-hai. This swelling of the ground, which is probably more ancient than the elevation of the mountain-chains by which it is intersected, is situated, as we have already remarked, between 81° and 118° east longitude from Greenwich. Measured at right angles to its longitudinal axis, its breadth in the south, between Ladak, Gertop, and H’lassa (the seat of the great Lama), is 720 miles; between Hami in the Celestial Mountains, and the great curve of the Hoang-ho, near the In-schan chain, it is scarcely 480; but in the north, between the Khanggai, where the great city of Karakhorum once stood, and the chain of Khin-gan-Petscha, which runs in a meridian line (in the part of Gobi traversed in going from Kiachta to Pekin by way of Urga), it is 760 miles. The whole extent of this elevated ground, which must be carefully distinguished from the more eastern and higher mountain-range, may be approximately estimated, including its deflections, at about three times the area of France. The map of the mountain-ranges and volcanoes of Central Asia, which I constructed in 1839, but did not publish until 1843, shows in the clearest manner the hypsometric relations between the mountain-ranges and the Gobi plateau. It was founded on the critical employment of all the astronomical determinations accessible to me, and on many of the very rich and copious orographic descriptions in which Chinese literature abounds, and which were examined at my request by Klaproth and Stanislaus Julien. My map marks in prominent characters the mean direction and the height of the mountain-chains, together with the chief features of the interior of the continent of Asia from 30 to 60 degrees of latitude, between the meridians of Pekin and Cherson. It differs essentially from any map hitherto published.

The Chinese enjoyed a triple advantage, by means of which they were enabled to enrich their earliest literature with so considerable an amount of orographic knowledge regarding Upper Asia, and more especially those regions situated between the In-schan, the alpine lake of Khuku-noor, and the shores of the Ili and Tarim, lying north and south of the Celestial Mountains, and which were so little known to Western Europe. These three advantages were, besides the peaceful conquests of the Buddhist pilgrims, the warlike expeditions towards the west (as early as the dynasties of Han and Thang, one hundred and twenty-two years before our era, and again in the ninth century, when conquerors advanced as far as Ferghana and the shores of the Caspian Sea); the religious interest attached to certain high mountain summits, on account of the periodical performance of sacrifices, in accordance with pre-existing enactments; and lastly, the early and generally known use of the compass for determining the direction of mountains and rivers. This use, and the knowledge of the south-pointing of the magnetic needle, twelve centuries before the Christian era, gave a great superiority to the orographic and hydrographic descriptions of the Chinese over those of Greek and Roman authors, who treated less frequently of subjects of this nature. The acute observer Strabo was alike ignorant of the direction of the Pyrenees and of that of the Alps and Apennines.^[BE]

To the lowlands belong almost the whole of Northern Asia to the north-west of the volcanic Celestial Mountains (Thian-schan); the steppes to the north of the Altai and the Sayanic chain; and the countries which extend from the mountains of Bolor, or Bulyt-tagh (Cloud Mountains in the Uigurian dialect), which run in a north and south direction, and from the upper Oxus, whose sources were discovered in the Pamershian Lake, Sir-i-kol (Lake Victoria), by the Buddhist pilgrims Hiuen-thsang and Song-yun in 518 and 629, by Marco Polo in 1277, and by Lieutenant Wood in 1838, towards the Caspian Sea; and from Lake Tenghiz or Balkasch, through the Kirghis Steppe, towards the Aral and the southern extremity of the Ural Mountains. In the vicinity of mountainous plains, whose elevation varies from 6000 to more than 10,000 feet above the sea’s level, we may assuredly be allowed to apply the term lowlands to districts which are only elevated from 200 to 1200 feet. The first of these heights correspond with that of the city of Mannheim, and the second with that of Geneva and Tübingen. If we extend the application of the word plateau, which has so frequently been misused by modern geographers, to elevations of the soil which scarcely present any sensible difference in the character of the vegetation and climate, physical geography, owing to the indefiniteness of the merely relatively important terms of high and low land, will be unable to distinguish the connexion between elevation above the sea’s level and climate, between the decrease of the temperature and the increase in elevation. When I was in Chinese Dzungarei, between the boundaries of Siberia and Lake Saysan (Dsaisang), at an equal distance from the Icy Sea and the mouth of the Ganges, I might assuredly consider myself to be in Central Asia. The barometer, however, soon showed me that the elevation of the plains watered by the Upper Irtysch between Ustkamenogorsk and the Chinese Dzungarian post of Chonimailachu (the sheep-bleating) was scarcely as much as from 850 to 1170 feet. Pansner’s earlier barometric determinations of height, which were first made known after my expedition, have been confirmed by my own observations. Both afford a refutation of the hypotheses of Chappe D’Auteroche (based on calculations of the fall of rivers) regarding the elevated position of the shores of the Irtysch, in Southern Siberia. Even further eastward, the Lake of Baikal is only 1420 feet above the level of the sea.

In order to associate the idea of the relation between lowlands and highlands, and of the successive gradations in the elevation of the soil, with actual data based on accurate measurements, I subjoin a table, in which the heights of the elevated plains of Europe, Africa, and America are given in an ascending scale. With these numbers we may then further compare all that has as yet been made known regarding the mean height of the Asiatic plains, or true lowlands.

		Toises.	Feet.
Plateau	of Auvergne	170	1,087
„	of Bavaria	260	1,663
„	of Castille	350	2,238
„	of Mysore	460	2,942
„	of Caracas	480	3,070
„	of Popayan	900	5,755
„	of the vicinity of the Lake of Tzana, in Abyssinia	950	6,075
„	of the Orange River (in South Africa)	1000	6,395
„	of Axum (in Abyssinia)	1100	7,034
„	of Mexico	1170	7,482
„	of Quito	1490	9,528
„	of the Province de los Pastos	1600	10,231
„	of the vicinity of the Lake of Titicaca	2010	12,853

No portion of the so-called Desert of Gobi, which consists in part of fine pasture lands, has been so thoroughly investigated in relation to its differences of elevations as the zone which extends over an area of nearly 600 miles, between the sources of the Selenga and the Chinese wall. A very accurate barometrical levelling was executed, under the auspices of the Academy of St. Petersburgh, by two distinguished savans—the astronomer George Fuss, and the botanist Bunge. They accompanied a mission of Greek monks to Pekin, in the year 1832, in order to establish there one of those magnetic stations whose construction I had recommended. The mean height of this portion of the Desert of Gobi amounts hardly to 4263 feet, and not to 8000 or 8500 feet, as had been too hastily concluded from the measurements of contiguous mountain summits by the Jesuits Gerbillon and Verbiest. The surface of the Desert of Gobi is not more than 2558 feet above the level of the sea between Erghi, Durma, and Scharaburguna; and scarcely more than 320 feet higher than the plateau of Madrid. Erghi is situated midway, in 45° 31′ north lat., and 111° 26′ east long., in a depression of the land extending in a direction from south-west to north-east over a breadth of more than 240 miles. An ancient Mongolian saga designates this spot as the former site of a large inland sea. Reeds and saline plants, generally of the same species as those found on the low shores of the Caspian Sea, are here met with; while there are in this central part of the desert several small saline lakes, the salt of which is carried to China. According to a singular opinion prevalent among the Mongols, the ocean will at some period return, and again establish its dominion in Gobi. Such geological reveries remind us of the Chinese traditions of the bitter lake, in the interior of Siberia, of which I have elsewhere spoken.^[BF]

The basin of Kashmir, which has been so enthusiastically praised by Bernier, and too moderately estimated by Victor Jacquemont, has also given occasion to great hypsometric exaggerations. Jacquemont found by an accurate barometric measurement that the height of the Wulur Lake, in the valley of Kashmir, near the capital Sirinagur, was 5346 feet. Uncertain determinations by the boiling point of water gave Baron Carl von Hügel 5819 feet, and Lieutenant Cunningham only 5052 feet.^[BG] The mountainous districts of Kashmir, which has excited so great an interest in Germany, and whose climatic advantages have lost somewhat of their reputation since Carl von Hügel’s account of the four months of winter snow in the streets of Sirinagur,^[BH] does not lie on the high crests of the Himalaya, as has commonly been supposed, but constitutes a true cauldron-like valley on their southern declivity. On the south-west, where the rampart-like Pir Panjal separates it from the Indian Punjaub, the snow-crowned summits are covered, according to Vigne, by basaltic and amygdaloid formations. The latter are very characteristically termed by the natives schischak deyu, or devil’s pock-marks.^[BI] The charms of the vegetation have also been very differently described, according as travellers passed into Kashmir from the south, and left behind them the luxuriant and varied vegetation of India; or from the northern regions of Turkestan, Samarkand, and Ferghana.

Moreover, it is only very recently that we have obtained a clearer view regarding the elevation of Thibet, the level of the plateau having long been uncritically confounded with the mountain tops rising from it. Thibet occupies the space between the two great chains of the Himalaya and the Kuen-lün, and forms the elevated ground of the valley between them. The land is divided from east to west, both by the inhabitants and by Chinese geographers, into three parts. We distinguish Upper Thibet, with its capital, H’lassa (probably 9592 feet high); Middle Thibet, with the town of Leh or Ladak (9995 feet); and Little Thibet, or Baltistan, called the Thibet of Apricots (Sari-Butan), in which lie Iskardo (6300 feet), Gilgit, and south of Iskardo, but on the left bank of the Indus, the plateau Deotsuh, whose elevation was determined by Vigne (11,977 feet). On carefully examining all the notices we have hitherto possessed regarding the three Thibets, and which will have been abundantly augmented during the present year by the brilliant boundary surveying expedition under the auspices of the Governor-general, Lord Dalhousie, we soon become convinced that the region between the Himalaya and the Kuen-lün is no unbroken table-land, but that it is intersected by mountain groups, which undoubtedly belong to perfectly distinct systems of elevation. Actual plains are very few in number: the most considerable are those between Gertop, Daba, Schang-thung (the Shepherd’s Plain), the native country of the shawl-goat, and Schipke (10,449 feet); those round Ladak, which attain an elevation of 13,429 feet, and must not be confounded with the depressed land in which the town lies; and finally, the plateau of the Sacred Lakes, Manasa and Ravanahrada (probably 14,965 feet), which was visited by Father Antonio de Andrada as early as the year 1625. Other parts are entirely filled with compressed mountain masses, “rising,” as a recent traveller observes, “like the waves of a vast ocean.” Along the rivers, the Indus, the Sutledge, and the Yaru-dzangbotschu, which was formerly regarded as identical with the Buramputer (or correctly the Brahmaputra), points have been measured which are only between 6714 and 8952 feet above the sea; and the same is the case with the Thibetian villages Pangi, Kunawur, Kelu, and Murung.^[BJ] From many carefully collected determinations of heights, I think that we are justified in assuming that the plateau of Thibet between 73° and 85° east long, does not attain a mean elevation of 11,510 feet: this is hardly the elevation of the fruitful plain of Caxamarca in Peru, and is 1349 and 2155 feet less than the plateau of Titicaca, and of the street pavement of the Upper Town of Potosi (13,665 feet).

That beyond the Thibetian highlands and the Gobi, whose outline has been already defined, Asia presents considerable depressions, and indeed true lowlands, between the parallels of 37° and 48°, where once an immeasurable continuous plateau was fabulously supposed to exist, is proved by the cultivation of plants which cannot flourish without a certain degree of temperature. An attentive study of the travels of Marco Polo, in which mention is made of the cultivation of the vine, and of the production of cotton in northern latitudes, had long ago directed the attention of the acute Klaproth to this point. In a Chinese work, bearing the title Information respecting the recently conquered Barbarians (Sinkiang-wai-tan-ki-lio), it is stated that “the country of Aksu, somewhat to the south of the Celestial Mountains, near the rivers which form the great Tarim-gol, produces grapes, pomegranates, and numberless other fruits of singular excellence; also cotton (Gossypium religiosum), which, covers the fields like yellow clouds. In summer the heat is extremely great, and in winter there is here, as at Turfan, neither intense cold nor heavy snow.” The neighbourhood of Khotan, Kaschgar, and Yarkand still, as in the time of Marco Polo,^[BK] pays its tribute in home-grown cotton. In the oasis of Hami (Khamil), above 200 miles east of Aksu, orange trees, pomegranates, and the finer vines are found to flourish.

The products of cultivation which are here noticed lead to the belief that over extensive districts the elevation of the soil is very slight. At so great a distance from the sea side, and in the easterly situation which so much increases the degree of winter cold, a plateau, as high as Madrid or Munich, might indeed have a very hot summer, but would hardly have, in 43° and 44° latitude, an extremely mild and almost snowless winter. I have seen a high summer heat favour the cultivation of the vine, as at the Caspian Sea, 83 feet below the level of the Black Sea (at Astrakhan, latitude 46° 21′); but the winter cold is there from –4° to –13°. Moreover, the vine is sunk to a greater depth in the ground after the month of November. We can understand that cultivated plants, which, as it were, live only in the summer, as the vine, the cotton plant, rice, and melons, may be cultivated with success between the latitudes of 40° and 44°, on plateaux at an elevation of more than 3000^[BL] feet, and may be favoured by the action of radiant heat; but how could the pomegranate trees of Aksu, and the orange trees of Hami, whose fruit Father Grosier extolled as excellent, endure a long and severe winter (the necessary consequence of a great elevation^[BM])? Carl Zimmerman^[BN] has shown it to be extremely probable that the Tarim depression, or the desert between the mountain chain of Thian-schan and Kuen-lün, where the steppe river Tarim-gol discharges itself into the Lake of Lop, formerly described as an alpine lake, is hardly 1280 feet above the level of the sea, or only twice the elevation of Prague. Sir Alexander Burnes also ascribes to Bokhara only an elevation of 1188 feet. It is most earnestly to be desired that all doubt regarding the elevation of the plateaux of Central Asia, south of 45° north latitude, should finally be removed by direct barometrical measurements, or by determinations of the boiling point of water, conducted with greater care than is usual in these cases. All our calculations of the difference between the limits of perpetual snow and the maximum elevation of vine cultivation in different climates, rest at present on too complex and uncertain elements.

In order as briefly as possible to rectify that which has been advanced in the former edition of the present work, regarding the great mountain systems which intersect the interior of Asia, I subjoin the following general review:—We begin with the four parallel chains, which run, with tolerable regularity, from east to west, and are connected together by means of a few detached transverse lines. Differences of direction indicate, as in the Alps of Western Europe, a difference in the epoch of elevation. After the four parallel chains (the Altai, the Thian-schan, the Kuen-lün, and the Himalaya) we must consider as following the direction of meridian, the Ural, the Bolor, the Khingan, and the Chinese chains, which, with the great inflection of the Thibetian and Assam-Birmese Dzangbo-tschu incline from north to south. The Ural divides a depressed portion of Europe from a similarly low portion of Asia. The latter was called by Herodotus,^[BO] and even earlier by Pherecydes of Syros, Scythian or Siberian Europe, and comprised all the countries to the north of the Caspian and of the Iaxartes, which flows from east to west, and may therefore be regarded as a continuation of our Europe, “as it now exists, extending lengthwise across the continent of Asia.”

1. The great mountain system of the Altai (the “gold mountains” of Menander of Byzantium, an historical writer of the seventh century; the Altaï-alin of the Moguls, and the Kin-schan of the Chinese) forms the southern boundary of the great Siberian lowlands, and running between 50° and 52½° north latitude, extends from the rich silver mines of the Snake Mountains, and the confluence of the Uba and the Irtysch, to the meridian of Lake Baikal. The divisions and names of the “Great” and the “Little Altai,” taken from an obscure passage of Abulghasi, should be wholly avoided.^[BP] The mountain system of the Altai comprehends—(a) the Altai proper, or Kolywanski Altai, which is entirely under the Russian sceptre: it lies to the west of the intersecting fissures of the Telezki Lake, which follow the direction of the meridian; and in ante-historic times probably constituted the eastern shore of the great arm of the sea, by which, in the direction of the still existing lakes, Aksakal-Barbi and Sary-Kupa,^[BQ] the Aralo-Caspian basin was connected with the Icy sea;—(b) East of the Telezki chains, which follow the direction of the meridian, the Sayani, Tangnu, and Ulangom, or Malakha ranges, all tolerably parallel with each other, and following an east and west direction. The Tangnu, which merges in the basin of the Selenga, has, from very remote times, constituted the national boundary between the Turkish race, to the south, and the Kirghis (Hakas, identical with Σάκαι), to the north.^[BR] It is the original seat of the Samoieds or Soyotes. who wandered as far as the Icy Sea, and were long regarded in Europe as a race inhabiting exclusively the coasts of the Polar Sea. The highest snow-covered summits of the Kolywan Altai are the Bielucha and the Katunia Pillars. The latter attain only a height of about 11,000 feet, or about the height of Etna. The Daurian highland, to which the mountain node of Kentei belongs, and on whose eastern margin lies the Jablonoi Chrebet, divides the depressions of the Baikal and the Amur.

2. The mountain system of the Thian-schan, or the chain of the Celestial Mountains, the Tengri-tagh of the Turks (Tukiu), and of the kindred race of the Hiongnu, is eight times as long, in an east and west direction, as the Pyrenees. Beyond, that is to say, to the west of its intersection with the meridian chain of the Bolor and Kosuyrt, the Thian-schan bears the names of Asferah and Aktagh, is rich in metals, and is intersected with open fissures, which emit hot vapours luminous at night, and which are used for obtaining sal-ammoniac.^[BS] East of the transverse Bolor and Kosyurt chain, there follow successively in the Thian-schan, the Kashgar Pass (Kaschgar-dawan), the Glacier Pass of Djeparle, which leads to Kutch and Aksu in the Tarim basin; the volcano of Pe-schan, which erupted fire and streams of lava at least as late as the middle of the seventh century; the great snow-covered massive elevation of Bogdo-Oola; the Solfatara of Urumtsi, which furnishes sulphur and sal-ammoniac (nao-scha), and lies in a coal district; the volcano of Turfan (or volcano of Ho-tscheu or Bischbalik), almost midway between the meridians of Turfan (Kune Turpan), and of Pidjan, and which is still in a state of activity. The volcanic eruptions of the Thian-schan chain reach, according to Chinese historians, as far back as the year 89, A.D., when the Hiongnu were pursued by the Chinese from the sources of the Irtysch as far as Kutch and Kharaschar^[BT]. The Chinese General, Teu-hian, crossed the Thian-schan, and saw “the Fire Mountains, which sent out masses of molten rock that flow to the distance of many Li.”

The great distance of the volcanoes of the interior of Asia from the sea coast is a remarkable and isolated phenomenon. Abel Rémusat, in a letter to Cordier^[BU], first directed the attention of geologists to this fact. This distance, for instance, in the case of the volcano of Pe-schan, from the north or the Icy Sea at the mouth of the Obi, is 1528 miles; and from the south or the mouths of the Indus and the Ganges, 1512 miles; so central is the position of fire-emitting volcanoes in the Asiatic continent. To the west its distance from the Caspian at the Gulf of Karuboghaz, is 1360 miles, and from the east shores of the Lake of Aral, 1020 miles. The active volcanoes of the New World had hitherto offered the most remarkable examples of great distance from the sea coast, but in the case of the volcano of Popocatepetl, in Mexico, this distance is only one hundred and thirty-two miles, and only ninety-two, one hundred and four, and one hundred and fifty-six, respectively in the South American volcanoes Sangai, Tolima, and de la Fragua. All extinct volcanoes, and all trachytic mountains, which have no permanent connexion with the interior of the earth, have been excluded from these statements^[BV]. East of the volcano of Turfat, and of the fruitful Oasis of Hami, the chain of the Thian-schan merges into the great elevated tract of Gobi, which runs in a S.W. and N.E. direction. This interruption of the mountain chain continues for more than 9½ degrees of longitude; it is caused by the transversal intersection of the Gobi, but beyond the latter, the more southern chain of In-schan (Silver Mountains), proceeding from west to east, to the shores of the Pacific near Pekin (north of the Pe-tscheli), forms a continuation of the Thian-schan. As we may regard the In-schan as an eastern prolongation of the fissure from which the Thian-schan is upheaved, so we may also be inclined to consider the Caucasus as a western prolongation of the same range, beyond the Great Aralo-Caspian basin or of the lowlands of Turan. The mean parallel or axis of elevation of the Thian-schan oscillates between 40° 40′ and 43° north latitude; that of the Caucasus (inclining, according to the map of the Russian Staff, from E.S.E. to W.N.W.) between 41° and 44°.^[BW] Of the four parallel chains that traverse Asia, the Thian-schan is the only one of which no summit has as yet been measured.

3. The mountain system of the Kuen-lün (Kurkun or Kulkun), including the Hindoo-Coosh, with its western prolongation in the Persian Elburz and Demavend, and the American chain of the Andes, constitute the longest lines of elevation on our planet. At the point where the meridian chain of the Bolor intersects the Kuen-lün at right angles, the latter receives the name of Onion Mountains (Tchsung-ling), a term also applied to a portion of the Bolor at the inner eastern angle of intersection. Bounding Thibet in the north, the Kuen-lün runs in a regular direction from east to west, in the parallel of 36° north latitude; until the chain is broken in the meridian of H’lassa, by the vast mountain node which surrounds the Sea of Stars, Sing so-hai (so celebrated in the mythical geography of the Chinese), and the Alpine lake of Khuku-noor. The chains of Nan-schan and Kilian-schan, lying somewhat further north, and extending to the Chinese wall near Liang-tsheu, may almost be regarded as the eastern prolongation of the Kuen-lün. To the west of the intersection of the Bolor and the Kuen-lün (Tchsung-ling), the regular direction of the axes of elevation (inclining from east to west in the Kuen-lün and Hindoo-Coosh, and from south-east to north-west in the Himalaya) proves, as I have elsewhere attempted to show, that the Hindoo-Coosh is a prolongation of the Kuen-lün and not of the Himalaya.^[BX] From the Taurus in Lycia to the Kafiristan, the chain follows the parallel of Rhodes (the diaphragm of Dicæarchus) over a distance of 45 degrees of longitude. The grand geological views of Eratosthenes,^[BY] which were further developed by Marinus of Tyre, and by Ptolemy, and according to which “the prolongation of the Taurus in Lycia was continued, in the same direction, through all Asia as far as India,” appear in part to be based on representations derived by the Persians and Indians from the Punjaub.

“The Brahmins maintain,” says Cosmas Indicopleustes, in his Christian Topography^[BZ], “that a line drawn from Tzinitza (Thinæ) across Persia and Romania, would exactly pass over the centre of the inhabited earth.” It is remarkable, as Eratosthenes observes, that this greatest axis of elevation in the old world passes directly through the basin (the depression) of the Mediterranean, in the parallels of 35½° and 36° north latitude, to the Pillars of Hercules.^[CA] The most eastern portion of Hindoo-Coosh is the Paropanisus of the ancients, the Indian Caucasus of the companions of the great Macedonian. The name of Hindoo-Coosh, which is so frequently used by geographers, does not in reality apply to more than one single mountain pass, where the climate is so severe, as we learn from the travels of the Arabian writer, Ibn Batuta, that many Indian slaves frequently perish from the cold.^[CB] The Kuen-lün still exhibits active fire-emitting eruptions at the distance of several hundred miles from the sea-coast. Flames, visible at a great distance, burst from the cavern of the mountain of Schinkhieu, as I learn from a translation of the Yuen-thong-ki, made by my friend Stanislaus Julien.^[CC] The loftiest summit in the Hindoo-Coosh, north-west of Jellalabad, is 20,232 feet above the level of the sea; to the west, towards Herat, the chain sinks to 2558 feet, rising again north of Teheran, in the volcano of Demavend, to the height of 14,675 feet.

4. The mountain system of the Himalaya has a normal direction from east to west, running more than 15 degrees of longitude (from 81° to 97°), or from the colossal mountain Dhawalagiri (28,072 feet) to the intersection of the Dzangbo-tscheu (the Irawaddy of Dalrymple and Klaproth), whose existence was long regarded as problematical, and to the meridian chains, which cover the whole of Western China, and form the great mountain group, from which spring the sources of the Kiang, in the provinces of Sse-tschuan, Hu-kuang, and Kuang-si. Next to the Dhawalagiri, the Kinchinjinga, and not the more eastern peak of Schamalari, as has hitherto been supposed, is the highest point of this portion of the Himalaya, which inclines from east to west. The Kinchinjinga, in the meridian of Sikhim, between Butan and Nepal, between the Schamalari (23,980 feet) and the Dhawalagiri, is 28,174 feet in height.

It is only within the present year that it has been trigonometrically measured with exactness, and as I learn from India through the same channel, “that a new measurement of the Dhawalagiri still leaves it the first place among all the snow-crowned summits of the Himalaya,” this mountain must necessarily have a greater elevation than the 28,072 feet hitherto ascribed to it.^[CD] The point of deflection in the direction of the chain is, near the Dhawalagiri, in 81° 22′, east longitude. From thence the Himalaya no longer follows a due west direction, but runs from S.E. to N.W., as a vast connecting system of veins between Mozufer-abad and Gilgit, merging into a part of the Hindoo-Coosh chain in the south of Kafiristan. Such a turn and alteration in the line of the axis of elevation of the Himalaya (from E.-W. to S.E.-N.W.) certainly indicates, as in the western region of our European Alpine mountains, a different age or period of elevation. The course of the Upper Indus, from the sacred lakes of Manasa and Itavana-hrada, (at an elevation of 14,965 feet,) in the vicinity of which this great river takes its origin, to Iskardo, and to the plateau of Deotsuh (at an elevation of 12,994 feet), measured by Vigne, follows in the Thibetian highlands the same north-westerly direction as the Himalaya.

Here are situated the Djawahir, whose height was long since accurately determined at 26,902 feet, and the Alpine valley of Caschmere (never visited by winds or storms), where, at an elevation of only 5346 feet, lies the lake of Wulur, which freezes every winter, and whose surface is never broken by a single ripple.

After considering the four great mountain systems of Asia, which, in their normal geognostic character, are true parallel chains, we must turn to the long series of alternating elevations following a direction from north to south, and which extend from Cape Comorin, opposite to the island of Ceylon, to the Icy Sea, alternating between the parallels of 66° and 77° east longitude, from S.S.E. to N.N.W. To this system of meridian chains, whose alternations remind us of faults in veins, belong the Ghauts, the Soliman chain, the Paralasa, the Bolor, and the Ural range. This interruption of the profile of the elevation is so constituted, that each new chain begins in a degree of latitude beyond that to which the preceding one had attained, all alternating successively in an opposite direction. The importance which the Greeks (probably not earlier than the second century of our era) attached to these chains running from north to south, induced Agathodæmon and Ptolemy (Tab. vii. et viii.) to regard the Bolor under the name of Imaus as an axis of elevation, which extended as far as 62° north latitude into the basin of the lower Irtysch and Obi.^[CE]

As the vertical height of mountain summits above the sea’s level (however unimportant the phenomenon of the more or less extensive folding of the crust of a planetary sphere may be in the eyes of geognosists) will always continue, like all that is difficult of attainment, to be an object of general curiosity, the present would appear to furnish a fitting place for the introduction of an historical notice relative to the gradual advance of hypsometric knowledge. When I returned to Europe in 1804, after an absence of four years, not one of the high snow-crowned summits of Asia (in the Himalaya, the Hindoo-Coosh, or the Caucasus) had been yet measured with any degree of accuracy. I was unable, therefore, to compare my determinations of the heights of perpetual snow in the Cordilleras of Quito or the mountains of Mexico, with any results obtained in India. The important travels of Turner, Davis, and Saunders to the highlands of Thibet, were indeed accomplished in the year 1783; but the intelligent Colebrooke justly observed that the height of the Schamalari (28° 5′ north latitude, 89° 30′ east longitude, somewhat north of Tassisudan), as given by Turner, rested on a foundation quite as slight as the assumed measurements of the heights seen from Patna and Kafiristan by Colonel Crawford and Lieutenant Macartney.^[CF] The admirable labours of Webb, Hodgson, Herbert, and the brothers Gerard, have indeed thrown considerable light on the question concerning the heights of the colossal summits of the Himalaya; but yet, in 1808, the hypsometric knowledge of the East Indian mountain chains was still so uncertain, that Webb wrote to Colebrooke, “The height of the Himalaya still remains undetermined. It is true that I have ascertained that the summits visible from the elevated plains of Rohilkand are 21,000 feet higher than that plateau, but we are ignorant of their absolute height above the sea.”

In the year 1820 it first began to be currently reported in Europe that there were not only much higher summits in the Himalaya than in the Cordilleras, but that Webb had seen in the pass of Niti, and Moorcroft in the Thibetian plateau of Daba, and the sacred lakes, fine corn-fields and fertile pasturelands at elevations far exceeding the height of Mont Blanc. This announcement was received in England with great incredulity, and opposed by doubts regarding the influence of the refraction of light. I have shown the unsoundness of such doubts in two printed treatises on the mountains of India, in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique. The Tyrolese Jesuit, Father Tiefenthaler, who in 1766 penetrated as far as the provinces of Kemaun and Nepal, had already divined the importance of the Dhawalagiri. We read on his map: “Montes Albi, qui Indis Dolaghir, nive obsiti.” Captain Webb always employs the same name. Until the measurements of the Djawahir (30° 22′ north latitude, and 79° 58′ east longitude, 26,902 feet in elevation), and of the Dhawalagiri (28° 40′ north latitude, and 83° 21′ east longitude, 28,072 feet in elevation), were made known in Europe, the Chimborazo, which, according to my trigonometrical measurement, was 21,422 feet in height,^[CG] was still everywhere regarded as the loftiest summit on the earth. The Himalaya appeared, therefore, at that time, to be 4323 feet or 6620 feet higher than the Cordilleras, according as the comparison was made with the Djawahir or the Dhawalagiri. Pentland’s South American travels, in the years 1827 and 1838, directed attention to two snow-crowned summits of Upper Peru, east of the lake of Titicaca, which were conjectured to be respectively 3824 and 2578 feet higher than the Chimborazo.^[CH] It has been already observed,^[CI] that the most recent computations in the measurements of the Sorata and Illimani have shown the error of this hypsometric assertion. The Dhawalagiri, therefore, on whose declivity in the river-valley of Ghandaki, the Salagrana Ammonites, so celebrated in the Brahminical ritual as symbols of the testaceous incarnation of Vishnu, are collected, still indicates a difference of elevation between both continents of more than 6600 feet.

The question has been asked, whether there may not be still greater heights in the rear of the southernmost chain, which has been as yet measured with more or less exactitude. Colonel George Lloyd, who in 1840 edited the important observations of Captain Alexander Gerard and his brother, entertains the opinion, that in that part of the Himalaya, which he somewhat indefinitely names the “Tartaric Chain” (and consequently in Northern Thibet, in the direction of the Kuen-lün, perhaps in the Kailasa of the sacred lakes or beyond Leh) there are mountain-summits which attain an elevation of from 29,000 to 30,000 feet, one or two thousand feet higher, therefore, than the Dhawalagiri.^[CJ] No definite opinion can be formed on the subject until we are in the possession of actual measurements, since the indication which led the natives of Quito, long before the arrival of Bouguer and La Condamine, to regard the summit of the Chimborazo as the culminating point—or the highest point within the region of perpetual snow—is rendered very deceptive in the temperate zone of Thibet, where the radiation of the table-land is so effective, and where the lower limit of perpetual snow does not constitute a regular line of equal level as in the tropics. The greatest elevation above the level of the sea that has been reached by man on the sides of the Himalaya is 19,488 feet. This elevation was gained by Captain Gerard, with seven barometers, as we have already observed, on the mountain of Tarhigang, somewhat to the north-west of Schipke.^[CK] This happens to be almost the same height as that to which I myself ascended up on the Chimborazo (on the 23rd of June, 1802), and which was reached thirty years later (16th of December, 1831) by my friend Boussingault. The unattained summit of the Tarhigang is, moreover, 1255 feet higher than the Chimborazo.

The passes across the Himalaya from Hindostan to Chinese Tartary, or rather to Western Thibet, especially between the rivers Buspa and Schipke, or Langzing Khampa, are from 15,347 to 18,544 feet in height. In the chain of the Andes I found that the pass of Assuay, between Quito and Cuenca, at the Ladera de Cadlud, was also fully 15,566 feet above the level of the sea. A great part of the Alpine plains of the interior of Asia would lie buried throughout the whole year in snow and ice, if the limits of perpetual snow were not singularly elevated, probably to about 16,626 feet, by the force of the heat radiated from the Thibetian plain, the constant serenity of the sky, the rarity of the formation of snow in the dry atmosphere, and by the powerful solar heat peculiar to the eastern continental climate, which characterizes the northern declivity of the Himalaya. Fields of barley (of Hordeum hexastichon) have been seen in Kunawur at an elevation of 14,700 feet and another variety of barley, called Ooa, and allied to Hordeum cœleste, even much higher. Wheat thrives admirably well in the Thibetian highlands, up to an elevation of 12,000 feet. On the northern declivity of the Himalaya, Captain Gerard found that the upper limits of the birch woods ascend to 14,069 feet; and small brushwood used by the natives for fuel in their huts is even found within the parallels of 30° 45′ and 31° north latitude, at an elevation of 16,946 feet, and therefore nearly 1280 feet higher than the lower snow-limit in the equatorial regions. It follows from the data hitherto collected that on the northern declivity of the Himalaya the mean of the lower snow-line is at least 16,626 feet, whilst on the southern declivity it falls to 12,980 feet. But for this remarkable distribution of heat in the upper strata of the atmosphere, the mountain plain of Western Thibet would be rendered uninhabitable for the millions of men who now occupy it.^[CL]

In a letter which I have lately received from India from Dr. Joseph Hooker, who is engaged in meteorological and geological observations, as well as in the study of the geography of plants, he says, “Mr. Hodgson, whom we here consider more thoroughly conversant than any other geographer with the hypsometric relations of the snow ranges, recognises the correctness of the opinions you have advanced in the third part of your Asie centrale, regarding the cause of the unequal height of the limit of perpetual snow on the northern and the southern declivity of the Himalaya range. In the trans-Sutledge region (in 36° north latitude) we often observed the snow limit as high as 20,000 feet, whilst in the passes south of Brahmaputra, between Assam and Birmah (in 27° north latitude), where the most southern snow-capped mountains of Asia are situated, the snow limit sinks to 15,000 feet.” I believe we ought to distinguish between the extreme and the mean elevations, but in both we find the formerly disputed difference between the Thibetian and the Indian declivities manifested in the clearest manner.

My result for the mean height of the snow line as given in Asie centrale, t. iii., p. 326.		Extremes according to Dr. Hooker’s Letter.
	Feet.		Feet.
Northern declivity	16,626	Northern declivity	20,000
Southern declivity	12,981	Southern declivity	15,000
Difference	3,645	Difference	5,000

The local differences vary still more, as may be seen from the series of extremes given in Asie centrale, t. iii., p. 295. Alexander Gerard saw the snow-limit ascend to 20,463 feet on the Thibetian declivity of the Himalaya; and Jacquemont found it as low as 11,500 feet on the south-Indian declivity, north of Cursali on the Jumnautri.

[The recent investigations of Lieutenant Strachey show that M. Humboldt has been led astray, when treating of the Himalaya, by the very authorities on whom he placed the most reliance. The results of his inquiries on this point are given in the first volume of the Cosmos (Bohn’s Ed.), pp. 9 and 338. As the subject is one of considerable interest we give a brief sketch of Lieutenant Strachey’s^[CM] recent labours, confining ourselves to his own views, and omitting (for want of space) his somewhat lengthy exposition of the errors committed by the authorities quoted by Humboldt. The following are his personal observations regarding the southern limit of the belt of perpetual snow.

“In this part of the Himalaya it is not, on an average of years, till the beginning of December, that the snow line appears decidedly to descend for the winter. After the end of September, indeed, when the rains are quite over, light falls of snow are not of very uncommon occurrence on the higher mountains, even down to 12,000 feet; but their effects usually disappear very quickly, often in a few hours. The latter part of October, the whole of November, and the beginning of December, are here generally characterised by the beautiful serenity of the sky; and it is at this season, on the southern edge of the belt, that the line of perpetual snow is seen to attain its greatest elevation.

“The following are the results of trigonometrical measurements of the elevation of the inferior edge of snow on spurs of the Treslú and Nandádevi groups of peaks, made, before the winter snow had begun, in November, 1848.

Point observed.	Height as observed on face exposed to the East.			Height on face exposed to West. Observed from Almorah.
	From Almorah, (height, 5586 ft.)	From Binsar, (height, 7969 ft.)	Mean.
No.	Feet.	Feet.	Feet.	Feet.
1	16,599	16,767	16,683	15,872
2	16,969	17,005	16,987
3	17,186	17,185	17,185	14,878
4	15,293	15,361	15,327

“The points 1, 2 and 3 are in ridges that run in a south-westerly direction. The dip of the strata being to the north-east, the faces exposed to view from the south are for the most part very abrupt, and snow never accumulates on them to any great extent. This in some measure will account for the height to which the snow is seen to have receded on the eastern exposures, that is, upwards of 17,000 feet. On the western exposures the ground is less steep, and the snow is seen to have been observed at a considerable less elevation; but it was in very small quantities, and had probably fallen lately, so that I am inclined to think that its height, viz., about 15,000 feet, rather indicates the elevation below which the light autumnal falls of snow were incapable of lying, than that of the inferior edge of the perpetual snow. It is further to be understood, that below this level of 15,000 feet the mountains were absolutely without snow, excepting those small isolated patches that are seen in ravines, or at the head of glaciers, which, of course, do not affect such calculations as these. On the whole, therefore, I consider that the height of the snow-line on the more prominent points of the southern edge of the belt may be fairly reckoned at 16,000 feet at the very least.

“The point No. 4 was selected as being in a much more retired position than the others. It is situate not far from the head of the Pindur river. It was quite free from snow at 15,300 feet, and I shall therefore consider 15,000 feet as the elevation of the snow-line in the re-entering angles of the chain.

“I conclude, then, that 15,500 feet, the mean of the heights at the most and least prominent points, should be assigned as the mean elevation of the snow-line at the southern limit of the belt of perpetual snow in Kumaon; and I conceive that whatever error there may be in this estimate will be found to lie on the side of diminution rather than of exaggeration.

“This result appears to accord well with what has been observed in the Bissehir range. The account given by Dr. Gerard of his visit to the Shátúl Pass on this range, which he undertook expressly for the purpose of determining the height of the snow-line, contains the only definite information as to the limit of the perpetual snow at the southern edge of the belt that is to be found in the whole of the published writings of the Gerards; and the following is a short abstract of his observations. Dr. Gerard reached the summit of the Shátúl Pass, the elevation of which is 15,500 feet, on the 9th of August, 1822, and remained there till the 15th of the same month. He found the southern slope of the range generally free from snow, and he states that it is sometimes left without any whatever. On the top of the pass itself there was no snow; but on the northern slope of the mountain it lay as far down as about 14,000 feet. On his arrival rain was falling, and out of the four days of his stay on this pass it either rained or snowed for the greater part of three. The fresh snow that fell during this time did not lie below 16,000 feet, and some of the more precipitous rocks remained clear even up to 17,000 feet.

“The conclusion to which Dr. Gerard comes from these facts is, that the snow-line on the southern face of the Bissehir range is at 15,000 feet above the sea. But I should myself be more inclined, from his account, to consider that 15,500 feet was nearer the truth; and in this view I am confirmed by verbal accounts of the state of the passes on this range, which I have obtained from persons of my acquaintance, who have crossed them somewhat later in the year. The difference, however, is after all trifling.

“Such is the direct evidence that can be offered on the height of the snow-line at the southern limit of the belt of perpetual snow: some additional light, may, however, be thrown on the subject generally by my shortly explaining the state in which I have found the higher parts of the mountains at the different seasons during which I have visited them.

“In the beginning of May, on the mountains to the east of the Rámganga river, near Námik, I found the ground on the summit of the ridge, called Champwá, not only perfectly free from snow at an elevation of 12,000 feet, but covered with flowers, in some places golden with calsha and ranunculus polypetalus, in others purple with primulus. The snow had in fact already receded to upwards of 12,500 feet, behind which even a few little gentians proclaimed the advent of spring.

“Towards the end of the same month, at the end of the Pindur, near the glacier from which that river rises, an open spot on which I could pitch my tent could not be found above 12,000 feet. But here the accumulation of snow, which was considerable in all ravines even below 11,000 feet, is manifestly the result of avalanches and drift. The surface of the glacier, clear ice as well as moraines, was quite free from snow up to nearly 13,000 feet; but the effect of the more retired position of the place in retarding the melting of the snow, was manifest from the less advanced state of the vegetation. During my stay at Pinduri the weather was very bad, and several inches of snow fell; but, excepting where it had fallen on the old snow, it all melted off again in a few hours, even without the assistance of the sun’s direct rays. On the glacier, at 13,000 feet, it had all disappeared twelve hours after it fell.

“On revisiting Pinduri about the middle of October, the change that had taken place was very striking. Now not a sign of snow was to be seen on any part of the road up to the very head of the glacier; a luxuriant vegetation had sprung up, but had already almost entirely perished, and its remains covered the ground as far as I went. From this elevation, about 13,000 feet, evident signs of vegetation could be seen to extend far up the less precipitous mountains. The place is not one at which the height of the perpetual snow can be easily estimated, for on all sides are glaciers, and the vast accumulations of snow from which they are supplied, and these cannot always be readily distinguished from snow in situ; but as far as I could judge, those places which might be considered as offering a fair criterion were free from snow up to 15,000, or even 16,000 feet.

“Towards the end of August I crossed the Barjikang Pass, between Rálam and Juhár, the elevation of which is about 15,300 feet. There was here no vestige of snow on the ascent to the pass from the south-east, and only a very small patch remained on the north-western face. The view of the continuation of the ridge in a southerly direction was cut off by a prominent point, but no snow lay on that side within 500 feet of the pass, while to the north I estimated that there was no snow in considerable quantity within 1500 feet or more, that is, nearly up to 17,000 feet. The vegetation on the very summit of the pass was far from scanty, though it had already begun to break up into tufts, and had lost that character of continuity which it had maintained to within a height of 500 or 600 feet. Species of Potentilla, Sedum, Saxifraga, Corydalis, Aconitum, Delphinium, Thalictrum, Ranunculus Saussurea, Gentiana, Pedicularis, Primula, Rheum, and Polygonum, all evidently flourishing in a congenial climate, showed that the limits of vegetation and region of perpetual snow were still far distant.

“In addition to these facts, it may not be out of place to mention that there are two mountains visible from Almorah, Rigoli-gúdri, in Garhwal between the Kailganga and Nandákni, and Chipula, in Kumaon, between the Gori and Dauli (of Darma), both upwards of 13,000 feet in elevation, from the summits of which the snow disappears long before the end of the summer months, and which do not usually again become covered for the winter till late in December.”

These remarks are followed by an exposition of the errors into which Webb, Colebrooke, Hodgson, A. Gerard, and Jacquemont, have fallen. The heights assigned by these travellers “must all be rejected; nor can it be considered at all surprising that any amount of mistake, as to the height of the snow-line, should be made, so long as travellers cannot distinguish snow from glacier ice, or look for the boundary of perpetual snow at the beginning of the spring.”

With regard to the northern limit of the belt of perpetual snow, Lieutenant Strachey’s observations were made in September, 1848, on his way from Milam into Hundes, viâ Unta-dhúra, Kyungar-ghát, and Balch-dhúra, at the beginning of the month; and on his road back again, viâ Lakhur-ghát, at the end of the month.

“Of the three passes that we crossed on our way from Milam, all of them being about 17,000 feet in elevation, the first is Wata-dhára, and we saw no snow on any part of the way up to its top, which was reached in a very disagreeable drizzle of rain and snow. The final ascent to the pass from the south is about 1000 feet. The path leads up the side of a ravine, down which a small stream trickles, the ground having a generally even and rounded surface. Neither on any part of this nor on the summit of the pass itself, which is tolerably level, were there any remains of snow whatever. On the ridge to the right and left there were patches of snow a few hundred feet above; and on the northern face of the pass an accumulation remained that extended about 200 feet down, apparently the effect of the drift through the gap in which the pass lies. Below this again the ground was everywhere quite free from snow. On the ascent to Wata-dhára, at perhaps 17,000 feet, a few blades of grass were seen, but on the whole it may be said to have been utterly devoid of vegetation. On the north side of the pass, 300 or 400 feet below the summit, a cruciferous plant was the first met with.

“The Kyungar pass, which is four or six miles north of Wata-dhára, was found equally free from snow on its southern face and summit, which latter is particularly open and level. The mountains on either side were also free from snow to some height; but on the north a large bed lay a little way down the slope, and extended to about 500 feet from the top. On this pass a boragineous plant in flower was found above 17,000 feet; a species of Urtica was also got about the same altitude, and we afterwards saw it again nearly as high up on the Lakhur pass.

“In our ascent to the Balch pass no snow was observed on any of the southern spires of the range, and only one or two very small patches could be seen from the summit on the north side. The average height of the top of this range can hardly be more than 500 feet greater than that of the pass; and as a whole it certainly does not enter the region of perpetual snow. As viewed from the plains of Handes, it cannot be said to appear snowy, a few only of the peaks being tipped.

“We returned to Milam viâ Chirchun. The whole of the ascent to The Lakhur pass was perfectly free from snow to the very top, i.e. 18,300 feet, and many of the neighbouring mountains were bare still higher. The next ridge on this route is Jainti-dhára, which is passed at an elevation of 18,500 feet, but still without crossing the least portion of snow. The line of perpetual snow is however evidently near; for though the Jainti ridge was quite free, and some of the peaks near us were clear probably to upwards of 19,000 feet, yet in more sheltered situations unbroken snow could be seen considerably below us; and on the whole I think that 18,500 feet must be near the average height of the snow-line at this place.”

A brief recapitulation of the principal results of Lieutenant Strachey’s inquiries shows us that “the snow-line or the southern edge of the belt of perpetual snow in this portion of the Himalaya is at an elevation of 15,000 feet, while on the northern edge it reaches 18,500 feet; and that on the mountains to the north of the Sutlej, or still further, it recedes even beyond 19,000 feet. The greater elevation which the snow-line attains on the northern edge of the belt of perpetual snow is a phenomenon not confined to the Thibetan declivity alone, but extending far into the interior of the chain; and it appears to be caused by the quantity of snow that falls on the northern portion of the mountains being much less than that which falls farther to the south along the line where the peaks, covered with perpetual snow, first rise above the less elevated ranges of the Himalaya.”

The letters of Dr. Joseph Hooker published during the present year (1849) in the Athenæum (pp. 431 and 1039) may also be consulted with advantage.