ILLUSTRATIONS (10). MOUNTAIN CHAINS OF ASIA. 71 



east longitude, 26,902 feet in elevation), and of the Dha- 

 walagiri (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 mea- 

 surement, was 21,422 feet, in height,* was still every- 

 where 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. f It has been already observed,;}; 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 cele- 

 brated in the Brahminical ritual as symbols of the testaceous 

 incarnation of Vishnu, are collected, still indicates a differ- 

 ence 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-lun, 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. § No definite opinion 

 can be formed on the subject until we are in the possession 



* Recueil a" Observations astronomiques, t. i. p. 73. 

 *t* Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes pour 1830, pp. 320, 323. 

 % See Illustration (5), p. 44. 



§ See Lloyd and Gerard, Tour in the Himalaya, 1840, vol. i., pp. 143, 

 312, and Asie centrale, t. iii., p. 324. 



