ILLUSTRATIONS (10). MOUNTAIN CHAINS OF ASIA. 67 



east to north-west in the Himalaya) proves, as I have else- 

 where attempted to show, that the Hindoo-Coosh is a pro- 

 longation of the Kuen-lim and not of the Himalaya.* From 

 the Taurus in Lycia to the Kafiristan, the chain follows the 

 parallel of Rhodes (the diaphragm of Dicaearchus) over a dis- 

 tance of 45 degrees of longitude. The grand geological 

 views of Eratosthenes,f 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 J, " that a line drawn from Tzinitza 

 (Thinae) across Persia and Romania, would exactly pass over 

 the centre of the inhabited earth." It is remarkable, as Era- 

 tosthenes 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 35^° and 36° north lati- 

 tude, to the Pillars of Hercules. § 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 geo- 

 graphers, 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.|| The Kuen-ltin 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 Schin- 

 khieu, as I learn from a translation of the Yuen-thong-ki, 

 made by my friend Stanislaus Julien.^[ 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 



* Asie centrale, t. i. pp. xxiii et 118 — 159; t. ii. pp. 431 — 434, 

 465. 



+ Strabo, lib. ii. p. 68 ; lib. xi. pp. 490, 511 ; lib. xv. p. 689. 



X Montfaucon, Collectio nova Patrum, t. ii. p. 137. 



§ Compare Asie centrale, t. i. pp. xxiii et 122 — 138 ; t. ii. pp. 430— 

 434, with Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 543, Bohn's ed. 



II Travels, p. 97. 



"H Asie centrale, t. ii. pp. 427, 483. 



J? 2 



