ILLUSTRATIONS (10). THE PLATEAUX OF ASIA. 53 



dhist 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.* The discovery 

 of fossil camel-bones of the ancient world in the Sewalik hills 

 (which are projecting spurs of the Himalaya range), by Cap- 

 tain 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. f 

 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 TeneriffeJ. 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 Green- 

 land, and the existence of floating masses of ice.§ 



(10) p. 3 — " Between the Altai and the Kuen-lun." 



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, ,||" that there is not in this sense any con- 

 tinuous mountain plateau in the interior of Asia. 



* Bitter, Asien, Bd. viii. s. 670, 672, and 746. 



•f Humboldt, Cosmos, Bonn's ed., vol. i. p. 281. 



+ Singapore Journal of the Indian Archijyelago, 1847, p. 286. 



§ Sartorius von Waltershausen, Physisch-geograjihische Skizze von 

 Island, 1847, s. 41. 



|| Humboldt, Premier Mcmoire sur les Montagnes de VInde, in the 

 Annales de Chimie et de Physique, t. iii. 1816, p. 303; Second Me- 

 moire, t. xiv. 1820, pp. 5—55. 



