Chapter IV: Part 4

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]

Footnote 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 Extremes according to Dr. Hooker’s
the snow line as given in _Asie Letter.
centrale_, t. iii., p. 326.
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.

┌─────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────┐ │ │ │Height on face│ │ Point │ Height as observed on face exposed to the │ exposed to │ │observed.│ East. │West. Observed│ │ │ │from Almorah. │ ├─────────┼──────────────┬──────────────┬──────────────┼──────────────┤ │ │From Almorah, │ From Binsar, │ │ │ │ │(height, 5586 │(height, 7969 │ Mean. │ │ │ │ ft.) │ ft.) │ │ │ ├─────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┤ │ 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.