Ante-Columbian Discovery of America. 93 



which are found in such quantity in the valleys of the Missis- 

 sippi and the Ohio, He is inclined also to trace to these 

 Welsh adventurers, or at least to some early Europeans, 

 the now almost extinct tribe, the Mandans — a people fairer 

 and handsomer than the lied men, — that are now found 1800 

 miles above St Louis, on the Missouri, as described by Lewis 

 and Clarke, and Catlin, the American travellers. 



These, and several other circumstances, which might have 

 been adduced, prove that Columbus cannot be regarded as 

 the original discoverer of the New World. 



Remarks on the Snow-Line in the Himalaya, By Captain 

 Thomas Hutton. 



In the Journal of the Asiatic Society, No. 28, New Series, p. 287, 

 for April 1849,* are some remarks on the snow-line in the Hima- 

 laya, from the pen of Lieut. R. Strachey of the Engineers, wherein 

 he endeavours to prove that the observations some years since made 

 by myself and others, in the northern tracts of the Western Moun- 

 tains, are erroneous. (As it appears to me that this gentleman has 

 actually left the question where he found it, I might have been in- 

 duced to pass by his remarks without notice, had he not, in the 

 excitement of an imaginary triumph, thought proper to indulge in a 

 somewhat satirical tone of condemnation.) 



That Lieut. Strachey, after three or four years of scientific re- 

 searches, has at length been enabled fully to corroborate the previous 

 observations of Webb and others, in Kumaon, there is no denying ; but 

 as the truth of those observations, when applied to that neighbour- 

 hood, was never called in question, there appears to have been a waste 

 of time and ingenuity on a laborious endeavour to prove that which 

 was already admitted to be an established fact. Webb, Hodgson, 

 Colebroke, and the Gerards, are each and all reviewed, and in some 

 measure found wanting, and pronounced to be ignorant alike of the 

 true meaning of "the snow-line," and of the nature of a " glacier;" 

 shall I, then, desire a better fate than to be condemned in the com- 

 pany of such distinguished observers ? 



Had Lieut. Strachey evinced more real anxiety to ascertain and 

 establish, not a local, but the general truth, and less proneness to 

 indulge in censure, he might have gathered from my letters in the 

 Calcutta Journal of Natural History, that no attempt was made, 



Also in vol. xlvii. of Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal. 



