68 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



chain sinks to 2558 feet, rising again north of Teheran, in the 

 yolcano 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 moun- 

 tain 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 Sikkim, 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 trigo- 

 nometrically measured with exactness, and as I learn from 

 India through the same channel, " that a new measure- 

 ment of the Dhawalagiri still leaves it the first place among 

 all the snow-crowned summits of the Himalaya," this moun- 

 tain must necessarily have a greater elevation than the 

 28,072 feet hitherto ascribed to it.* 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 Ravana-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 Thi- 



* From a letter of Dr. Joseph Hooker, the learned botanist to the last 

 Antarctic expedition, dated Darjeeling, 25th of July, 1848. 



