Chapter IV: Part 4

4. The mountain system of the Himalaya. The normal direction of this system is east and west when followed from 81° to 97° E. long. from Greenwich, or through more than fifteen degrees of longitude from the colossal Dhawalagiri (4390 toises, 28071 English feet) to the breaking through of the long-problematical Dzangbo-tschu river (the Irawaddy, according to Dalrymple and Klaproth), and to the chains running north and south which cover the whole of Western China, and in the provinces of Sse-tschuan, Hu-kuang, and Kuang-si form the great mountain group of the sources of the Kiang. The next highest culminating point to the Dhawalagiri, of this east and west part of the Himalaya, is not, as has been hitherto supposed, the eastern peak of the Schamalari, but the Kinchinjinga. This mountain is situated in the meridian of Sikhim, between Bootan and Nepaul, and between the Schamalari (3750? toises, 23980 English feet) and the Dhawalagiri: its height is 4406 toises, or 26438 Parisian, or 28174 English feet. It was first measured accurately by trigonometrical operations in the present year, and as the account of this measurement received by me from India says decidedly, “that a new determination of the Dhawalagiri leaves to the latter the first rank among all the snow-capped mountains of the Himalaya,” the height of the Dhawalagiri must necessarily be greater than that of 4390 toises, or 26340 Parisian, 28071 English feet, hitherto ascribed to it. (Letter of the accomplished botanist of Sir James Ross’s Antarctic Expedition, Dr. Joseph Hooker, written from Dorjiling, July 25, 1848.) The turning point in the direction of the axis of the Himalaya range is not far from the Dhawalagiri, in 79° E. long. from Paris (81° 22′ Greenwich). From thence to the westward the Himalaya no longer runs east and west, but from SE. to NW., connecting itself, as a great cross vein, between Mozuffer-abad and Gilgit south of Kafiristan, with a part of the Hindu-Coosh. Such a bend or change in the direction or strike of the axis of elevation of the Himalaya (from E-W. to SE-NW.), doubtless points, as in the western part of our European Alps, to a difference in the age or epoch of elevation. The course of the Upper Indus, from the sacred lakes Manasa and Ravana-hrada (at an elevation of 2345 toises, 14995 English feet) in the vicinity of which the great river rises, to Iskardo and to the plateau of Deo-tsuh, (at an elevation of 2032 toises, 12993 English feet) measured by Vigne, follows in the Thibetian highlands the same north-westerly direction as the Himalaya. Here is the summit of the Djawahir, long since well measured and known to be 4027 toises (25750 English feet) in elevation, and the valley of Kashmeer, where at an elevation of only 836 toises, (5346 English feet), the Wulur Lake freezes every winter, and, from the perpetual calm, no wave ever curls its surface.

Having thus described the four great mountain systems of Asia, which in their normal geognostic character are chains coinciding with parallels of latitude, I have next to speak of the series of elevations coinciding nearly with meridians, (or more precisely, having a SSE.-NNW. direction), which, from Cape Comorin opposite to the Island of Ceylon to the Icy Sea, alternate between the meridians of 66° and 77° E. long. from Greenwich. To this system, of which the alternations remind us of _faults in veins_, belong the Ghauts, the Soliman chain, the Paralasa, the Bolor, and the Ural. The interruptions of the series of elevations are so arranged that, beside their alternate position in respect to longitude, each new chain begins in a degree of latitude to which the preceding chain had not quite reached. The importance which the Greeks (although probably not before the second century) attached to these chains induced Agathodemon and Ptolemy (Tab. vii. and viii.) to represent to themselves the Bolor, under the name of Imaus, as an axis of elevation extending as far as 62° N. lat. into the low basin of the Lower Irtisch and the Obi. (Asie Centrale, T. i. p. 138, 154, and 198; T. ii. p. 367.)

As the perpendicular elevation of mountain summits above the level of the sea (unimportant as in the eyes of the geologist the circumstance of the greater or lesser corrugation of the crust of the earth may be), is still, like all that is difficult of attainment, an object of popular curiosity, the following historical notice of the gradual progress of hypsometric knowledge may here find a suitable place. When I returned to Europe in 1804 after a four years’ absence, not a single Asiatic snowy summit either in the Himalaya, the Hindu-Coosh, or the Caucasus, had been measured with any exactness; and I could not therefore compare my determinations of the height of perpetual snow in the Cordilleras of Quito, or the mountains of Mexico, with any corresponding determinations in the East. The important journey of Turner, Davis, and Saunders, to the highlands of Thibet, does indeed belong to the year 1783, but Colebrooke justly remarks, that the elevation given by Turner to the Schamalari (lat. 28° 57′, long. 89° 30′, a little to the north of Tassisudan) rests on foundations as slight as those of the so-called measurements of the heights seen from Patna and the Kafiristan by Colonel Crawford and Lieutenant Macartney. (Compare Turner, in the Asiatic Researches, vol. xii. p. 234, with Elphinstone’s Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, 1815, p. 95, and Francis Hamilton, Account of Nepal, 1819, p. 92.) The excellent observations and writings of Webb, Hodgson, Herbert, and the brothers Gerard, have thrown great and certain light on the elevation of the colossal summits of the Himalaya; yet, in 1808, the hypsometric knowledge of this great Indian chain was still so uncertain that Webb wrote to Colebrooke: “The height of the Himalaya still remains a problem. I find, indeed, that the summits visible from the high plain of Rohilcund are 21000 English feet above that plain, but we do not know the absolute height above the sea.”

It was not until the beginning of the year 1820 that it began to be reported in Europe, that not only were there in the Himalaya, summits much higher than those of the Cordilleras, but also that Webb had seen in the Pass of Niti, and Moorcroft in the Thibetian plateau of Daba and the Sacred Lakes, fine pastures and flourishing fields of corn, at altitudes far exceeding the height of Mont Blanc. These accounts were received in England with much incredulity, and were met by doubts respecting the influence of refraction. I have shown the groundlessness of these doubts in two memoirs (Sur les Montagnes de l’Inde), printed in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique. The Tyrolese jesuit, P. Tiefenthaler, who in 1766 penetrated into 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 uses the same name. Until the measurements of the Djawahir (lat. 30° 22′, long. 79° 58′, altitude 4027 toises, or 25750 English feet) and of the Dhawalagiri (lat. 28° 40′, long. 83° 21′, altitude 4390? toises, 28072 English feet) were made known in Europe, the Chimborazo (3350 toises, or 21421 English feet), according to my trigonometric measurement, (Recueil d’Observations astronomiques, T. i. p. 73) was still everywhere regarded as the highest summit on the surface of the earth. The Himalaya now appeared, according as the comparison was made with the Djawahir or the Dhawalagiri, 676 toises (4323 English feet), or 1040 toises (6650 English feet), higher than the Chimborazo. Pentland’s South American travels, in the years 1827 and 1838, fixed attention (Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes, 1830, p. 320 and 323) on two snowy summits of Upper Peru, east of the Lake of Titicaca, which were supposed to surpass the height of the Chimborazo respectively by 598 and 403 toises, (3824 and 2577 English feet.) I have remarked above, pp. 53-54, that the latest calculation of the measurements of the Sorata and Illimani shews this view to be incorrect. The Dhawalagiri (on the declivity of which, in the valley of the Ghandaki, the Salagrana Ammonites, so celebrated among the Brahmins as symbols of one of the incarnations of Vishnu, are collected) therefore still shews a difference between the culminating points of the Old and the New Continents of more than 6200 Parisian, or 6608 English feet.

The question has been raised, whether there may not exist behind the southernmost more or less perfectly measured chain, other still greater elevations. Colonel George Lloyd, who in 1840 edited the important observations of Captain Alexander Gerard and his brother, entertains an opinion that in the part of the Himalaya which he calls somewhat vaguely “the Tartaric chain,” (meaning therefore in north Thibet towards the Kuen-lün, and perhaps in Kailasa of the sacred lakes, or beyond Leh) there are summits of from 29000 to 30000 English feet,--one or two thousand feet higher therefore than the Dhawalagiri. (Lloyd and Gerard, Tour in the Himalaya, 1840, vol. i. p. 143 and 312; Asie Centrale, T. iii. p. 324.) So long as actual measurements are wanting, one cannot decide respecting such possibilities; as the indication, from which the natives of Quito, long before the arrival of Bouguer and La Condamine, recognised the superior altitude of the Chimborazo (namely, from the portion of its height above the region of perpetual snow being greater than in any of the other mountains), might prove very deceptive in the temperate zone of Thibet, where radiation is so active in the table-land, and where the lower limit of perpetual snow does not form a regular line at an equal elevation, as it does in the tropics. The greatest elevation above the level of the sea ever attained by human beings on the declivity of the Himalaya, is 3035 toises, or 18210 Parisian, or 19409 English feet, reached by Captain Gerard, with seven barometers, on the mountain of Tarhigang, a little to the north-west of Schipke. (Colebrooke, in the Transactions of the Geological Society, vol. vi. p. 411.) This happens to be exactly the same height as that reached by myself on the 23rd of June, 1802, and thirty years later by my friend Boussingault, on the 16th of December, 1831, on the declivity of the Chimborazo. The unattained summit of the Tarhigang is, however, 197 toises, or 1260 English feet, higher than that of the Chimborazo.

The passes across the Himalaya, leading from Hindostan into Chinese Tartary, or rather into Western Thibet, more particularly between the rivers of Buspa and Schipke or Langzing Khampa, are from 2400 to 2900 toises, or 15346 to 18544 English feet. In the chain of the Andes I found the pass of Assuay, between Quito and Cuenca on the Ladera de Cadlud, having a similar elevation, being 2428 toises, or 15526 English feet, high. A great part of the mountain plains of the interior of Asia would be buried throughout the year in perpetual snow and ice, if it were not, that by the great radiation of heat from the Thibetian plateau, by the constant serenity of the sky, by the rarity of the formation of snow in the dry atmosphere, and by the powerful solar heat peculiar to the eastern continental climate, the limit of perpetual snow is wonderfully raised on the northern slope of the Himalaya,--perhaps to 2600 toises, or 16625 English feet above the level of the sea. Fields of barley (Hordeum hexastichon) are seen in Kunawur up to 2300 toises, or 14707 English feet; and another variety of barley called Ooa, and allied to Hordeum cœleste, even much higher. Wheat succeeds extremely well in the Thibetian highlands up to 1880 toises, or 12022 English feet. On the northern declivity of the Himalaya, Captain Gerard found the upper limit of the higher birch woods ascend to 2200 toises, 14068 English feet; and small bushes which serve the inhabitants for fuel to warm their huts, attain, in the latitude of 30-3/4° and 31° of north latitude, a height of 2650 toises (16945 English feet), or almost 200 toises (1279 English feet) higher than the limit of perpetual snow under the equator. From the data hitherto collected it would follow, that we may take the lower limit of perpetual snow on the northern side of the Himalaya, on the average, and in round numbers, at 2600 toises, or about 16600 English feet; whilst on the southern declivity of the Himalaya the snow-line sinks to 2030 toises, or about 13000 English feet.

But for this remarkable distribution of temperature in the upper strata of the atmosphere, the mountain plain of Western Thibet would be uninhabitable to the millions who dwell there. (Compare my Examination of the Limit of Perpetual Snow on the two declivities of the Himalaya, in the Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 435-437; T. iii. p. 281-326, and in Kosmos, Engl. ed. vol. i. note 403; S. 483 of the original.)

A letter which I have just received from India from Dr. Joseph Hooker, who is engaged in meteorological and geological researches, as well as those connected with the geography of plants, says: “Mr. Hodgson, who we regard here as the geographer best acquainted with the hypsometric relations of the snow ranges, completely recognises the correctness of your statement in the third part of the Asie Centrale, respecting the reason of the inequality in the height of the limit of perpetual snow on the northern and southern declivities of the Himalaya. In the ‘trans Sutlej region’ in 36° lat. we often saw the snow limit only commence at an altitude of 20000 English feet, while in the passes south of the Brahmaputra, between Assam and Burman, in 27° lat., where the most southern Asiatic snowy mountains are situated, the limit of perpetual snow sinks to 15000 English feet.” I believe we ought to distinguish between the extreme and the mean heights, but in both we see manifested in the clearest manner the formerly contested differences between the Thibetian and the Indian declivities.

My statements respecting the mean | Extremes according to Dr.
height of the Snow-line | Joseph Hooker’s letter.
in the Himalaya. |
(Asie Centrale, tom. iii. p. 326.) |
Paris Eng. | Paris Eng.
feet. feet. | feet. feet.
Northern declivity 15600 16626 |Northern declivity 18764 20000
Southern „ 12180 12981 |Southern „ 14073 15000
----- ----- | ----- -----
Difference 3420 3645 | Difference 4691 5000

The local differences vary still more, as may be seen from the list of extremes given in my Asie Centrale, T. iii. p. 295. Alexander Gerard saw the snow limit ascend, on the Thibetian declivity of the Himalaya, to 19200 Parisian feet (20465 English); and on the southern Indian declivity, Jacquemont once saw it, north of Cursali on the Jumnotri, even as low as 10800 Parisian (11,510 English) feet.

[11] p. 6.--“_A brown Pastoral Race, the Hiongnu._”

The Hiongnu (Hiong-nou), who Deguignes, and with him many historians, long considered to be the Huns, inhabited that vast region of Tartary which is bounded on the east by Uo-leang-ho (the present Mantschu dominion), on the south by the Chinese wall, on the west by the U-siün territory, and on the north by the country of the Eleuthes. But the Hiongnu belong to the Turkish, and the Huns to the Finnish or Uralian race. The _northern_ Huns, a rude pastoral people, unacquainted with agriculture, were dark brown (sunburnt); the southern Huns or Haja-telah, (called by the Byzantines Euthalites or Nepthalites, and dwelling along the eastern shore of the Caspian), had a fairer complexion. The latter cultivated the ground, and possessed towns. They are often called the white, or fair Huns, and d’Herbelot even declares them to be Indo-Scythians. On Punu, the Leader or Tanju of the Huns, and on the great drought and famine which, about 46 A.D., caused a part of the nation to migrate northwards, (see Deguignes, Histoire gén. des Huns, des Turcs, &c., 1756, T. i. pt. i. p. 217; pt. ii. p. 111, 125, 223, 447.) All the accounts of the Huns taken from the above-mentioned celebrated work have been subjected to a learned and strict examination by Klaproth. According to the result of this research the Hiongnu belong to the widely diffused Turkish races of the Altai and Tangnu Mountains. The name Hiongnu, even in the third century before the Christian era, was a general name for the Ti, Thu-kiu or Turks, in the north and north-west of China. The southern Hiongnu overcame the Chinese, and in conjunction with them destroyed the empire of the northern Hiongnu. These latter fled to the west, and this flight seems to have given the first impulse to the migration of nations in Middle Asia. The Huns, who were long confounded with the Hiongnu, (as the Uigures with the Ugures and the Hungarians), belonged, according to Klaproth, to the Finnish race of the Ural mountains between Europe and Asia, a race which was variously mingled with Germans, Turks, and Samoieds. (Klaproth, Asia Polyglotta, p. 183 and 211; Tableaux Historiques de l’Asie, p. 102 and 109.) The Huns (Οὖννοι) are first named by Dionysius Perigetes, a writer who was able to obtain more accurate information respecting the interior of Asia, because, as a learned man born at Charax on the Arabian Gulf, Augustus had sent him back to the East to accompany thither his adopted son Caius Agrippa. Ptolemy, a century later, writes the word (Χοῦνοι) with a strong aspiration, which, as St. Martin observes, is found again in the geographical name of Chunigard.

[12] p. 7.--“_No carved Stone._”

On the banks of the Orinoco near Caicara where the forest region joins the plain, we have indeed found representations of the sun, and figures of animals, cut on the rocks: but in the Llanos themselves no traces of these rude memorials of earlier inhabitants have been discovered. It is to be regretted that we have not received any more complete and certain information respecting a monument which was sent to France to Count Maurepas, and which, according to Kalm, had been found by M. de Verandrier in the Prairies of Canada 900 miles west of Montreal, in the course of an expedition intended to reach the Pacific. (Kalm’s Reise, Th. iii. S. 416.) This traveller found in the middle of the plain enormous masses of stone, placed in an upright position by the hand of man, and on one of them was something which was taken to be a Tartar inscription. (Archæologia: or Miscellaneous Tracts, published by the Society of Antiquaries of London, vol. viii., 1787, p. 304.) How is it that so important a monument has remained unexamined? Can it really have contained alphabetical writing? or is it not far more probably a pictorial history, like the supposed Phœnician inscription on the bank of the Taunton River? I consider it, however, very probable that these plains were once traversed by civilised nations: pyramidal sepulchral mounds, and entrenchments of extraordinary length, found in various places between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies, and on which Squier and Davis (in the “Ancient Monuments of the Mississipi Valley”) are now throwing a new light, appear to confirm this supposition. (Relation Hist., T. iii. p. 155.) Verandrier had been sent on his expedition by the Chevalier de Beauharnois, the French Governor-general of Canada, in 1746. Several Jesuits in the city of Quebec assured Kalm that they had themselves had the supposed inscription in their hands: it was engraved upon a small tablet which had been let into a pillar of cut stone, in which position it was found. I have asked several of my friends in France to search out this monument, in case it should really be in existence in the collection of Count Maurepas, but without success. I find older, but equally doubtful, statements as to the existence of alphabetical inscriptions belonging to the primitive nations of America, in Pedro de Cieça de Leon, Chronica del Peru, P. i. cap. 87 (losa con letras en los edificios de Vinaque); in Garcia, Origen de los Indios, 1607, lib. iii. cap. 5, p. 258; and in Columbus’s Journal of his first voyage, in Navarrete, Viages de los Espanoles, T. i. p. 67. M. de Verandrier moreover affirmed, (and earlier travellers had also thought they had observed the same thing), that in the prairies of Western Canada, throughout entire days’ journeys, traces of the ploughshare were discoverable; but the total ignorance of the primitive nations of America with regard to this agricultural implement, the want of draft cattle, and the great extent of ground over which the supposed furrows are found,--all lead me to conjecture that this singular appearance of a ploughed field has been produced by some effect of water on the surface of the earth.

[13] p. 7.--“_Like an arm of the Sea._”

The great Steppe, which extends from east to west from the mouth of the Orinoco to the snowy mountains of Merida, turns to the south in the 8th degree of latitude, filling the space between the eastern declivity of the high mountains of New Granada, and the Orinoco, the course of which is, in this part, from south to north. This latter portion of the Llanos, which is watered by the Meta, the Vichada, the Zama, and the Guaviare, connects the valley of the Amazons with the valley of the Lower Orinoco. The word Paramo, which I often employ in these pages, signifies in Spanish America all those mountainous regions which are elevated from 1800 to 2200 toises above the level of the sea (11500 to 14000 English feet in round numbers), and in which an ungenial, rough, and misty climate prevails. Hail and snow fall daily for several hours in the upper Paramos, and furnish a beneficial supply of moisture to the alpine plants; a supply not arising from a large absolute quantity of aqueous vapour in these high regions, but from the frequency of showers, (hail and snow being so termed as well as rain), produced by the rapidly changing currents of air, and the variations of the electric tension. The arborescent vegetation of these regions is low and spreading, consisting chiefly of large flowering laurels and myrtle-leaved alpine shrubs, whose knotty branches are adorned with fresh and evergreen foliage. Escallonia tubar, Escallonia myrtilloides, Chuquiragua insignis, Aralias, Weinmannias, Frezieras, Gualtherias, and Andromeda reticulata, may be regarded as representatives of the physiognomy of this vegetation. To the south of the town of Santa Fé de Bogota is the Paramo de la Suma Paz; a lonely mountain group, in which, according to Indian tradition, vast treasures are buried. The torrent which flows under the remarkable natural bridge of the rocky ravine of Icononzo rises in this Paramo. In my Latin memoir entitled “De distributione geographica Plantarum secundem cœli temperiem et altitudinem montium, 1817,” I have sought to characterise those mountain regions: “Altitudine 1700-1900 hexapod. Asperrimæ solitudines, quæ a colonis hispanis uno nomine Paramos appellantur, tempestatum vicissitudinibus mire obnoxiæ, ad quas solutæ et emollitæ defluunt nives; ventorum flatibus ac nimborum grandinisque jactu tumultuosa regio, quæ æque per diem et per noctes riget, solis nubila et tristi luce fere nunquam calefacta. Habitantur in hac ipsa altitudine sat magnæ civitates, ut Micuipampa Peruvianorum, ubi thermometrum centes. meridie inter 5° et 8°, noctu--0°.4 consistere vidi; Huancavelica, propter cinnabaris venas celebrata, ubi altitudine 1835 hexap. fere totum per annum temperies mensis Martii Parisiis.” (Humboldt de distrib. geogr. Plant, p. 104.)

[14] p. 8.--“_The Andes and the eastern mountains send forth detached spurs which advance towards each other._”

The vast region situated between the eastern coast of South America and the eastern declivity of the Andes is narrowed by two mountain masses, which partially divide from each other the three valleys or plains of the Lower Orinoco, of the Amazons, and of the River Plate. The most northern mountains, called the group of the Parime, are opposite to the Andes of Cundinamarca which project far to the east, and assume in the 66th and 68th degrees of longitude the form of high mountains, connected by the narrow ridge of Pacaraima with the granite hills of French Guiana. On the map of Columbia constructed by me from my own astronomical observations, this connection is clearly marked. The Caribs, who penetrated from the missions of the Caroni to the plains of the Rio Branco, and as far as the Brazilian boundary, crossed in the journey the ridges of Pacaraima and Quimiropaca. The second mountain mass, which divides the valley of the Amazons from the River Plate, is the Brazilian group. In the province of Chiquitos (west of the Parecis range of hills), it approaches the promontory of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. As neither the group of the Parime which causes the great cataracts of the Orinoco, nor the Brazilian group of mountains, are absolutely connected with the Andes, the plains of Venezuela have a direct connection with those of Patagonia. (See my geognostical view of South America, in Relat. Hist. T. iii. p. 188-244.)

[15] p. 8.--“_Troops of dogs._”

European dogs have become wild in the grassy plains or Pampas of Buenos Ayres. They live in society, and in hollows in which they hide their young. If the society becomes too numerous, some families detach themselves and form new colonies. The European dog, which has become wild, barks as loud as the original American hairy race. Garcilaso relates, that before the arrival of the Spaniards the Peruvians had dogs, “perros gozques.” He calls the native dog, Allco: it is called at present in the Quichua language, to distinguish him from the European dog, “Runa-allco,” “Indian dog” (dog of the inhabitants of the country). The hairy Runa-allco seems to be a mere variety of the shepherd’s dog. He is small, with long hair, (usually of an ochry yellow, with white and brown spots,) and with upright sharp-pointed ears. He barks a great deal, but seldom bites the natives, however disposed to be mischievous to the whites. When the Inca Pachacutec, in his religious wars with the Indians of Xauxa and Huanca (the present valley of Huancaya and Jauja), conquered them, and converted them forcibly to the worship of the sun, he found them paying divine honours to dogs. Priests blew on the skulls of dogs, and the worshippers ate their flesh. (Garcilaso de la Vega, Commentarios Reales, P. i. p. 184.) This veneration of dogs in the valley of Huancaya is probably the reason why skulls and even entire mummies of dogs have been found in the Huacas, or Peruvian graves belonging to the earliest epoch. Von Tschudi, the author of an excellent Fauna Peruviana, has examined these skulls, and believes them to belong to a peculiar species of dog which he calls Canis ingæ, and which is different from the European dog. The Huancas are still called derisively by the inhabitants of other provinces, “dog-eaters.” Among the natives of the Rocky Mountains, cooked dog’s flesh is set before strangers as a feast of honour. Near Fort Laramie, (one of the stations of the Hudson’s Bay Company for the fur trade with the Sioux Indians), Captain Frémont attended a feast of this description. (Frémont’s Exploring Expedition, 1845, p. 42.)

The Peruvian dogs had a singular part to play in eclipses of the moon: they were beaten until the eclipse was over. The Mexican Techichi, a variety of the common dog, which latter was called in Anahuac Chichi, was completely dumb. Techichi signifies literally stone-dog, from the Aztec, Tetl, a stone. The Techichi was eaten according to the old Chinese fashion. The Spaniards found this food, before the introduction of European cattle, so indispensable, that almost the whole race was gradually extirpated. (Clavigero, Storia antica del Messico, 1780, T. i. p. 73.) Buffon confounds the Techichi with the Koupara of Guiana. (T. xv. p. 155.) The latter is identical with the Procyon or Ursus cancrivorus, the Raton crabier, or crab-eating Aquaraguaza of the Patagonian coast. (Azara sur les quadrupèdes du Paraguay, T. i. p. 315.) Linnæus, on the other hand, confounds the dumb variety of dogs with the Mexican Itzcuintepotzotli, a kind of dog still only imperfectly described, said to be distinguished by a short tail, a very small head, and a large hump on the back. The name signifies humped-dog, and is formed from the Aztec, itzcuintli (another word for dog), and tepotzotli, humped, a humpback. I was particularly struck in America, and especially in Quito and generally in Peru, with the great number of black dogs without hair, called by Buffon “chiens turcs” (Canis ægyptius, Linn.) Even among the Indians this variety is common, but it is generally despised and ill-treated. All European breeds of dogs perpetuate themselves very well in South America, and if the dogs there are not so handsome as those in Europe, the reason is partly want of care, and partly that the handsomest varieties (such as fine greyhounds and the Danish spotted breed) have never been introduced there.

Herr von Tschudi makes the singular remark, that in the Cordilleras, at elevations of 13000 feet, tender races of dogs and the European domestic cat are exposed to a particular kind of mortal disease. “Innumerable attempts have been made to keep cats as domestic animals in the town of the Cerro de Pasco, 13228 French (or 14100 English) feet above the level of the sea, but such attempts have failed, both cats and dogs dying at the end of a few days in fits, in which the cats were taken at first with convulsive movements, then tried to climb the walls, fell back exhausted and motionless, and died. In Yauli I had several opportunities of observing this chorea-like disease; it seems to be a consequence of the absence of sufficient atmospheric pressure.” In the Spanish colonies, the hairless dog was looked upon as of Chinese origin, and called Perro Chinesco, or Chino. The race was supposed to have come from Canton or from Manila: according to Klaproth, it has certainly been extremely common in China since very early times. Among the animals indigenous to Mexico there was an entirely hairless, dog-like, but very large wolf, called Xoloitzcuintli (from the Mexican xolo or xolotl, servant or slave). On American dogs, see Smith Barton’s Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania, P. i. p. 34.

The result of Tschudi’s researches on the American indigenous races of dogs is the following. There are two kinds almost specifically different: 1. The Canis caraibicus of Lesson, quite without hair, except a small bunch of white hair on the forehead and at the point of the tail, of a slate grey colour, and silent; it was found by Columbus in the Antilles, by Cortes in Mexico, and by Pizarro in Peru, where it suffers from the cold of the Cordilleras, but is still abundant in the warmer parts of the country, under the name of perros chinos. 2. The Canis ingæ, with pointed nose and pointed ears; this kind barks: it is now employed in the care of cattle, and shews many varieties of colours, from being crossed with European breeds. The Canis ingæ follows man to the high regions of the Cordilleras. In ancient Peruvian graves his skeleton is sometimes found resting at the feet of the human mummy. We know how often the carvers of monuments in our own middle ages employed the figure of a dog in this position, as an emblem of fidelity. (J. J. v. Tschudi, Untersuchungen über die Fauna Peruana, S. 247-251.) At the very beginning of the Spanish conquests European dogs became wild in the islands of San Domingo and Cuba. (Garcilaso, P. i. 1723, p. 326.) In the prairies between the Meta, the Arauca, and the Apure, voiceless dogs, (perros mudos,) were eaten in the 16th century. Alonso de Herrara, who, in 1535, undertook an expedition to the Orinoco, says the natives called them “Majos” or “Auries.” A well-informed traveller, Giesecke, found the same non-barking variety of dog in Greenland. The Esquimaux dogs pass their lives entirely in the open air; at night they scrape holes for themselves in the snow; they howl like wolves, in accompaniment with a dog that sits in the middle of the circle and sets them off. In Mexico the dogs were subjected to an operation to make them fatter and better eating. On the borders of the province of Durango, and farther to the north on the slave lake, the natives, formerly at least, conveyed their tents of buffalo skins on the backs of large dogs when changing their place of residence with the change of season. All these traits resemble the customs of the inhabitants of eastern Asia. (Humboldt, Essai polit. T. ii. p. 448; Relation hist. T. ii. p. 625.)

[16] p. 8.--“_Like the greater part of the Desert of Sahara, the Llanos are in the torrid zone._”

Significant denominations,--particularly such as refer to the form in relief of the earth’s surface, and which have arisen at a period when there was only very uncertain information respecting the countries in question and their hypsometric relations,--have led to various and long-continued geographical errors. The ancient denomination of the “Greater and Lesser Atlas” (Ptol. Geogr. lib. iii. cap. 1) has exercised the prejudicial influence here alluded to. No doubt the snow-covered western summits of the Atlas in the territory of Morocco may be regarded as the Great Atlas of Ptolemy; but where is the limit of the Little Atlas? Is the division into two Atlas chains, which the conservative tendencies of geographers have preserved for 1700 years, to be still maintained in the territory of Algiers, and even between Tunis and Tlemse? Are we to seek between the coast and the interior for parallel chains constituting a greater and a lesser Atlas? All travellers familiar with geognostical views, who have visited Algeria since it has been taken possession of by the French, contest the meaning conveyed by the generally received nomenclature. Among the parallel chains, that of Jurjura is generally supposed to be the highest of those which have been measured; but the well-informed Fournel, (long Ingenieur en chef des Mines de l’Algérie), affirms that the mountains of Aurès, near Batnah, which were still found covered with snow at the end of March, are higher. Fournel denies the existence of a Little and a Great Atlas, as I do that of a Little and a Great Altai (Asie Centrale, T. i. p. 247-252). There is only one Atlas, formerly called Dyris by the Mauritanians, and this name is to be applied to the “foldings,” (“rides”) or succession of crests which form the division between the waters flowing to the Mediterranean, and those which flow towards the Sahara lowland. The strike or direction of the Eastern Mauritanian portion of the Atlas is from east to west; that of the elevated Atlas of Morocco from north-east to south-west. The latter rises into summits which, according to Renou, (Exploration Scientifique de l’Algérie de 1840 à 1842, publiée par ordre du Gouvernement, Sciences Hist. et Geogr. T. viii. 1846, p. 364 and 373), attain an elevation of 10,700 Fr. (11400 Eng.) feet; exceeding, therefore, the height of Etna. A singularly formed highland of an almost square shape, (Sahab el Marga), bounded on the south by higher elevations, is situated in 33° lat. From thence towards the sea to the west, about a degree south of Mogador, the Atlas declines in height: this south-westernmost part bears the name of Idrar-N-Deren.

The northern Mauritanian boundaries of the widely extended low region of the Sahara, as well as its southern limits towards the fertile Soudan, are still but little known. If we take on a mean estimation the parallels of 16-1/2° and 32-1/2° as the outside limits, we obtain for the Desert, including its Oases, an area of more than 118500 square German geographical miles; or between nine and ten times the area of Germany, and almost three times that of the Mediterranean exclusive of the Black Sea. From the best and most recent intelligence, for which we are indebted to the French Colonel Daumas and MM. Fournel, Renou, and Carette, we learn that the desert of Sahara is composed of several detached basins, and that the number and the population of the fertile Oases is very much greater than had been imagined from the awfully desert character of the route between Insalah and Timbuctoo, and that from Mourzouk in Fezzan, to Bilma, Tirtuma, and Lake Tschad. It is now generally affirmed that the sand covers only the smaller portion of the great lowland. A similar opinion had been previously propounded by the acutely observant Ehrenberg, my Siberian travelling companion, from what he had himself seen (Exploration Scientifique de l’Algérie, Hist. et Geogr. T. ii. p. 332). Of larger wild animals, only gazelles, wild asses, and ostriches are to be met with. “Le lion du désert,” says M. Carette, (Explor. de l’Alg. T. ii. p. 126-129; T. vii. p. 94 and 97), “est un mythe popularisé par les artistes et les poètes. Il n’existe que dans leur imagination. Cet animal ne sort pas de sa montagne où il trouve de quoi se loger, s’abreuver et se nourrir. Quand on parle aux habitans du désert de ces bêtes féroces que les Européens leur donnent pour compagnons, ils repondent avec un imperturbable sang froid, il y a donc chez vous des lions qui boivent de l’air et broutent des feuilles? Chez nous il faut aux lions de l’eau courante et de la chair vive. Aussi des lions ne paraissent dans le Zahara que là où il y a des collines boisées et de l’eau. Nous ne craignons que la vipère (lefa) et d’innombrables essaims de moustiques, ces derniers là où il y a quelque humidité.”

Whereas Dr. Oudney, in the course of the long journey from Tripoli to Lake Tschad, estimated the elevation of the southern Sahara at 1637 English feet, to which German geographers have even ventured to add an additional thousand feet, the Ingenieur Fournel has, by careful barometric measurements based on corresponding observations, made it tolerably probable that a part of the northern desert is below the level of the sea. That portion of the desert which is now called “le Zahara d’Algérie” advances to the chains of hills of Metlili and el-Gaous, where the northernmost of all the Oases,--that of el-Kantara, fruitful in dates,--is situated. This low basin, which touches the parallel of 34° lat., receives the radiant heat of a stratum of chalk, (full of the shells of Inoceramus), inclined at an angle of 65° towards the south (Fournel sur les Gisemens de Muriate de Soude en Algérie, p. 6 in the Annales des Mines, 4me Série, T. ix., 1846, p. 546). “Arrivés a Biscara,” (Biskra), says Fournel, “un horizon indéfini comme celui de la mer se déroulait devant nous.” Between Biscara and Sidi Ocba the ground is only 228 (243 Eng.) feet above the level of the sea. The inclination increases considerably towards the south. In another work, (Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 320), where I have brought together everything relating to the depression of some portions of continents below the level of the sea, I have already noticed that according to Le Père the “bitter lakes” on the isthmus of Suez, when they have a little water,--and, according to General Andréossy, the Natron lakes of Fayoum,--are also lower than the level of the Mediterranean.

Among other manuscript notices of M. Fournel, I possess a vertical geological profile, which gives all the inflexions and inclinations of the strata, representing a section of the surface the whole way from Philippeville on the coast to the Desert of Sahara, at a spot not far from the Oasis of Biscara. The direction of the line on which the barometric measurements were taken is south 20° west; but the elevations determined are projected, as in my Mexican profiles, on a different plane,--a north-south one. Ascending uninterruptedly from Constantine, at an elevation of 332 toises (2122 Eng. feet), the culminating point is found between Batnah and Tizur, at an elevation of only 560 toises (3580 Eng. feet). In the part of the desert situated between Biscara and Tuggurt, Fournel has had a series of Artesian wells dug with success (Comptes Rendus de l’Acad. des Sciences, t. xx. 1845, p. 170, 882, and 1305). We learn from the old accounts of Shaw, that the inhabitants of the country knew of a subterranean supply of water, and relate fabulous tales of a “sea under the earth (bahr tôht el-erd).” Fresh waters flowing between clay and marl strata of the old cretaceous and other sedimentary deposits, under the action of hydrostatic pressure form gushing fountains when the strata are pierced (Shaw, Voyages dans plusieurs parties de la Berbérie, t. i. p. 169; Rennell, Africa, Append. p. lxxxv). That fresh water in this part of the world should often be found near beds of rock salt, need not surprise geologists acquainted with mines, since Europe offers many analogous phenomena.

The riches of the desert in rock-salt, and the fact of rock-salt having been used in building, have been known since the time of Herodotus. The salt zone of the Sahara (zone salifère du désert), is the southernmost of three zones, stretching across Northern Africa from south-west to north-east, and believed to be connected with the beds or deposits of rock-salt of Sicily and Palestine, described by Friedrich Hoffman and by Robinson. (Fournel, sur les Gisements de Muriate de Soude en Algérie, p. 28-41; Karsten über das Vorkommen des Kochsalzes auf der Oberfläche der Erde, 1846, S. 497, 648, and 741.) The trade in salt with Soudan, and the possibility of cultivating dates in the Oases, formed by depressions caused probably by falls or subsidences of the earth in the gypsum beds of the tertiary cretaceous or keuper promotions, have alike contributed to enliven the Desert, at least to some extent, by human intercourse. The high temperature of the air, which makes the day’s march so oppressive, renders the coldness of the nights, (of which Denham complained so often in the African Desert, and Sir Alexander Burnes in the Asiatic), so much the more striking. Melloni, (Memoria sull’ abassamento di temperatura durante le notti placide e serene, 1847, p. 55), ascribes this cold, produced doubtless by the radiation from the ground, less to the great purity and serenity of the sky, (irrigiamento calorifico per la grande serenità di cielo nell’ immensa e deserta pianura dell’ Africa centrale), than to the profound calm, the nightly absence of all movement in the atmosphere. (Consult also, respecting African meteorology, Aimé in the Exploration de l’Algérie, Physique génerale, T. ii., 1846, p. 147.)

The southern declivity of the Atlas of Morocco sends to the Sahara, in lat. 32°, a river, the Quad-Dra (Wady-Dra), which for the greater part of the year is nearly dry, and which Renou (Explor. de l’Alg. Hist. et Geogr., T. viii. p. 65-78) considers to be a sixth longer than the Rhine. It flows at first from north to south, until, in lat. 29° N. and long. 5° W., it turns almost at right angles to its former course, runs to the west, and, after passing through the great fresh water Lake of Debaid, enters the sea at Cape Nun, in lat. 28° 46′ N. and long. 11° 08′ W. This region, which was so celebrated formerly in the history of the Portuguese discoveries of the 15th century, and was afterwards wrapped in profound geographical obscurity, is now called on the coast “the country of the Sheikh Beirouk,” (a chief independent of the Emperor of Morocco.) It was explored in the months of July and August 1840, by Captain Count Bouet-Villaumez of the French Navy, by order of his government. From the official Reports and Surveys which have been communicated to me in manuscript, it appears evident that the mouth of the Quad-Dra is at present very much stopped up with sand, having an open channel of only about 190 English feet wide. A somewhat more easterly channel in the same mouth is that of the still very little known Saguiel el-Hamra, which comes from the south, and is supposed to have a course of at least 600 geographical miles. One is astonished at the length of these deep, but commonly dry river beds. They are ancient furrows, such as I have seen in the Peruvian desert at the foot of the Cordilleras, between those mountains and the coast of the Pacific. In Bouet’s manuscript “Relation de l’Expédition de la Malouine,” the mountains which rise to the north of Cape Nun are estimated at the great elevation of 2800 metres (9185 English feet).

Cape Nun is usually supposed to have been discovered in 1433, by the Knight Gilianez, acting under the command of the celebrated Infante Henry Duke of Viseo, and founder of the Academy of Sagres, which was presided over by the pilot and cosmographer Mestre Jacomè of Majorca; but the Portulano Mediceo, the work of a Genoese Navigator in 1351, already contains the name of Cavo di Non. The passage round this Cape was then as much dreaded as that of Cape Horn has since been, although it is 23′ north of the parallel of Teneriffe, and could be reached in a few days’ voyage from Cadiz. The Portuguese proverb, “quem passa o Cabo di Num, ou tornarà ou não,” could not deter the Infante, whose heraldic French motto, “talent de bien faire,” expressed his noble, enterprising, and vigorous character. The name of the Cape, in which a play of words on the negative particle has long been supposed, does not appear to me to have had a Portuguese origin. Ptolemy placed on the north-west coast of Africa a river Nuius, in the Latin version Nunii Ostia. Edrisi speaks of a town, Nul, or Wadi Nun, somewhat more to the south, and three days’ journey in the interior: Leo Africanus calls it Belad de Non. Long before the Portuguese squadron of Gilianez, other European navigators had advanced much beyond, or to the southward of, this Cape. The Catalan, Don Jayme Ferrer, in 1346, as we learn from the Atlas Catalan published by Buchon at Paris, had advanced as far as the Gold River, (Rio do Ouro), in lat. 23° 56′; and Normans, at the end of the 14th century, as far as Sierra Leone in lat. 8° 30′. The merit of having been the first to cross the equator on the western coast of Africa belongs, however, like that of so many other memorable achievements, to the Portuguese.

[17] p. 8.--“_As a grassy plain, resembling many of the Steppes of Central Asia._”

The Llanos of Caraccas and of the Rio Apure and the Meta, over which roam large herds of cattle, are, in the strictest sense of the term, “grassy plains.” Their prevalent vegetation, belonging to the two families of Cyperaceæ and Gramineæ, consists of various species of Paspalum, P. leptostachyum and P. lenticulare; of Kyllingia, K. monocephala (Rottb.), K. odorata; of Panicum, P. granuliferum, P. micranthum; of Antephora; Aristida; Vilfa; and Anthistiria, A. reflexa, and A. foliosa. Only here and there are found, interspersed among the Gramineæ, a few herbaceous dicotyledonous plants, consisting of two very low-growing species of Mimosa, (Sensitive Plant), Mimosa intermedia, and Mimosa dormiens, which are great favourites with the wild horses and cattle. The natives give to this group of plants, which close their delicate feathery leaves on being touched, the expressive name of Dormideras--sleepy plants. For many square miles not a tree is seen; but where solitary trees are found, they are, in moist places, the Mauritia Palm; in arid districts, a Proteacea, described by Bonpland and myself, the Rhopala complicata (Chaparro bobo), which Wildenow regarded as an Embothrium; also the highly useful Palma de Covija, or de Sombrero; and our Corypha inermis, an umbrella palm allied to Chamærops, which is used to cover the roofs of huts. How far more varied is the aspect of the Asiatic plains! Throughout a large portion of the Kirghis and Calmuck Steppes, which I have traversed from the Don, the Caspian, and the Orenburg Ural river the Jaik, to the Obi and the Upper Irtysh near Lake Dsaisang, through a space of 40 degrees of longitude, I have never seen, as in the Llanos, the Pampas, and the Prairies, an horizon like that of the ocean, where the vault of heaven appears to rest on the unbroken plain. At the utmost this appearance presented itself in one direction, or towards one quarter of the heavens. The Asiatic Steppes are often crossed by ranges of hills, or clothed with coniferous woods or forests. Even in the most fruitful pastures the vegetation is by no means limited to grasses; there is a great variety of herbaceous plants and shrubs. In spring-time small snow-white and red-flowering rosaceæ and amygdaleæ (Spiræa, Cratægus, Prunus spinosa, and Amygdalus nana) present a smiling aspect. I have already mentioned the tall and luxuriant Synantheræ (Saussurea amara, S. salsa, Artemisias, and Centaureas), and of leguminous plants, species of Astragalus, Cytisus, and Caragana. Crown Imperials, (Fritillaria ruthenica, and F. meleagroides), Cypripedias, and tulips, rejoice the eye by the bright variety of their colours.

A contrast to the pleasing vegetation of these Asiatic plains is presented by the desolate salt Steppes, particularly by the part of the Barabinski Steppe which is at the foot of the Altai mountains, and by the Steppes between Barnaul and the Serpent Mountain and the country on the east of the Caspian. Here Chenopodias, some species of Salsola and Atriplex, Salicornias and Halimocnemis crassifolia, (each species growing “socially”), form patches of vegetation on the muddy ground. See Göbel’s Journey in the Steppes of the South of Russia (Reise in die Steppe des südlichen Russlands, 1838, Th. ii. S. 244 and 301). Of the 500 phanerogamous species which Claus and Göbel collected in the Steppes, the Syrantheræ, the Chenopodeæ, and the Cruciferæ, were more numerous than the grasses; the latter being only 1/11 of the whole, and the former 1/7th and 1/9th. In Germany, from the mixture of hill and plain districts, the Glumaceæ (_i. e._ the Gramineæ, Cyperaceæ, and Juncaceæ collectively), form 1/7th; the Synantheræ or Compositæ 1/8th; and the Cruciferæ 1/18th of all our German phanerogamia. In the most northern parts of the flat Siberian lowlands, the fine map of Admiral Wrangell shews that the extreme northern limit of tree and shrub vegetation (Coniferæ and Amentaceæ) is, in the portion towards the Behring’s Straits side, in 67-1/4° lat.; and more to the west, towards the banks of the Lena, in 71°, which is the parallel of the north cape of Lapland. The plains which border the Icy Sea are the domain of cryptogamous plants. They are called Tundras (Tuntur in Finnish): they are swampy districts extending farther than the eye can reach, partly covered with a thick carpet of Sphagnum palustre and other mosses, and partly with a dry snow-white covering of Cenomyce rangiferina (Rein-deer moss), Stereocaulon paschale, and other lichens. Admiral Wrangell, in describing his perilous expedition to the new Siberian islands so rich in fossil wood, says: “These Tundras accompanied me to the extreme arctic coast. Their soil has been frozen for thousands of years. In the dreary uniformity of landscape, the eye of the traveller, surrounded by rein-deer moss, dwells with pleasure on the smallest patch of green turf showing itself now and then on a moist spot.”

[18] p. 8.--“_The causes which lessen both heat and dryness in the New World._”

I have tried to bring together in a brief and compendious manner the various causes which produce greater moisture and a less degree of heat in America; it will of course be understood that the question respects the _general_ hygrometric state of the atmosphere, and the temperature of the New Continent as a _whole_. Single districts, such as the island of Margarita, the Coasts of Cumana and Coro, are as hot and as dry as any part of Africa. It must also be remarked that the maximum of heat at certain hours of a summer’s day has been found, on a series of years, to be almost equal at very different parts of the earth’s surface, on the Neva, the Senegal, the Ganges, and the Orinoco; being approximately between 27° and 32° Reaumur (93° and 104° Fahrenheit), and generally not higher,--providing the observation be made in the shade, at a distance from all solid bodies which could radiate heat to the thermometer, not in an air filled with hot particles of dust or sand, and not with spirit thermometers, which absorb the light. It is probably to fine grains of sand floating in the air, and forming centres of radiant heat, that we must ascribe the dreadful temperature of 40° to 44°.8 Reaumur (122° to 133° Fah.) in the shade, to which my unhappy friend Ritchie, who perished there, and Captain Lyon, were exposed for weeks in the Oasis of Mourzouk. The most remarkable instance of very high temperature, in an air probably free from dust, has been recorded by an observer who knew well how to place and to correct all his instruments with the greatest degree of accuracy. Rüppell found 37°.6 Reaumur, (110°.6 Fahrenheit,) at Ambukol in Abyssinia, with a clouded sky, strong south-west wind, and an approaching thunderstorm. The _mean_ annual temperature of the tropics, or of the proper climate of palms, is, on land, between 20°.5 and 23°.8 Reaumur (or 78°.2 and 85°.5 Fahrenheit) without any considerable difference between the observations collected in Senegal, Pondichery, and Surinam. (Humboldt, Mémoire sur les lignes isothermes, 1817, p. 54. Asie Centrale, T. iii. Mahlmann, Table iv.)