HILL HIMALAYA MOUNTAINS. 



743 



took a General Natural History (3 vols. folio) ; and, 

 in conjunction with George Lewis Scott, he compiled 

 a Supplement to Chambers's Cyclopedia. In 1752, he 

 published Essays on Natural History and Philosophy, 

 containing curious microscopical observations. At 

 the same period he started the British Magazine, and 

 also carried on a diurnal publication, called the In- 

 spector. Notwithstanding his literary engagements, 

 he was a constant attendant on every place of public 

 amusement, where he collected, by wholesale, a great 

 variety of private intrigue and personal scandal, 

 which he freely retailed to the public in his Inspec- 

 tors and Magazines. This discreditable occupation 

 involved him in various quarrels. He invented seve- 

 ral quack medicines, which, by means of the puffing 

 advertisements he wrote to recommend them, had for 

 some time a considerable sale, to his great pecuniary 

 advantage. His talents as a botanist, however, were 

 by no means despicable. His greatest undertaking 

 was a work entitled the Vegetable system (17 vols., 

 folio). The title of knighthood he owed to the king 

 of Sweden, who bestowed on him the order of the 

 polar star, in return for the present of a copy of his 

 botanical works. He died of the gout, a disease for 

 which he professed to have a specific, in November, 

 1775. Besides the works already mentioned, he 

 wrote novels and plays, now deservedly forgotten. 

 Having had a quarrel with Garrick, on account of 

 the rejection of one of his dramas, that celebrated 

 actor characterized Hill, not unjustly, in the follow- 

 ing caustic epigram : 



" For physic and farcos his rival there scarce is ; 

 His farces are physic, his physic a farce is." 



HILL, ROBERT ; an industrious scholar, remarkable 

 for his application to study, notwithstanding the ob- 

 stacles arising from domestic penury, and a menial 

 occupation. He was born in 1699, at Miswell, near 

 Tring, in Hertfordshire, and was apprenticed to a 

 tailor and staymaker. To those employments he occa- 

 sionally joined that of a schoolmaster, by means of 

 which he with difficulty supported himself and his 

 family. In spite of these discouragements, he con- 

 trived to make himself acquainted with the Latin, 

 Greek, and Hebrew languages ; and he exhibited so 

 much literary talent as to attract the favourable 

 notice of the reverend Joseph Spence, who, with a 

 view to benefit this pains-taking student, published a 

 tract, entitled a Parallel between a most celebrated 

 Man of Florence (Magliabecchi) and one scarce ever 

 heard of in England, (R. Hill), printed at Strawberry- 

 hill, 1758, 8vo. By the assistance of his friendly 

 biographer, Hill was relieved from his embarrass- 

 ments, and enabled to remove to Buckingham, where 

 he died in 1777. He was the author of an answer to 

 bishop Clayton's Essay on Spirit ; Criticisms on the 

 Book of Job ; and a tract, entitled the Character of 

 a Jew. 



HILL, REV. ROWLAND, son of Sir Rowland Hill, 

 was born at Hawkstone, in 1744, and educated at 

 Eton and Cambridge. While yet at Eton, he em- 

 braced the views of the Methodists, and at Cambridge 

 he preached in the prison and in private houses, be- 

 fore entering into holy orders ; he also preached in 

 the tabernacle and chapel of Whitfield in London a 

 step which at once identified him with the Calvinistic 

 Methodists. Family influence prevented him, how- 

 ever; from formally joining that body, his avowed 

 predilection for which, at the same time, rendered it 

 extremely difficult for him to obtain ordination in the 

 church. At length he obtained a title to orders, and 

 was ordained deacon. " Soon after," says a notice 

 of him, " this man of God determined upon dis- 

 obedience to earthly statutes and human canons, that 

 he might be obedient to a heavenly vision, and per- 

 form a divine and immortal work. In imitation, 



therefore, of his illustrious patron and pattern, Whit- 

 field, he soon began to lift up his voice in a wider sphere 

 of labour to proclaim the gospel to listening crowds 

 in barns, meeting-houses, and, when they were too 

 small or too distant, or not to be procured, in streets 

 and fields, by the highways and hedges." In 1783, 

 he laid the foundation of Surrey chapel, in the Black- 

 friar's road, London, in the duties of which he spent 

 about the half of every subsequent year, employing 

 the rest of the time in provincial excursions. He 

 died on the llth April, 1833. His sermons are re- 

 presented to have been a singular mixture of solemn 

 exhortations and violent denunciations : sometimes 

 he introduced odd stories, puns, and jokes. 



HIMA ; a Sanscrit word, signifying cold, winter. 

 Hence Himalaya mountains, (q. v.) 



HIMALAYA, HIMALEH,orHIMALA MOUN- 

 TAINS, the Imaus of the ancients, called, by the 

 old Indian bards, the king of mountains, is a snow- 

 capped chain, rising, in gigantic masses, on the 

 northern boundary of Bengal and Upper Hindoostan, 

 and forming the rich valley of Cashmere (the land 

 which produces the costly shawls). There are five 

 passes over these mountains known to us, one of 

 which leads to Thibet, and two to Chinese Tartary. 

 These roads, the highest in the world, rise to an ele- 

 vation of 14,496 feet. To these mountains, piled up 

 before the elevated plateau of eastern Asia, the Hin- 

 doos have made pilgrimages for thousands of years, 

 visiting the temples and altars of their gods, where 

 the Ganges, the holiest of their rivers, rolls out from 

 among the precipices and snows, and where secret 

 horrors surround the throne of Mohadeo. No Euro- 

 pean had ventured to traverse this wilderness, for 

 fear of the barbarous Ghorkas, before the enterprise 

 was undertaken by two officers of the British army, 

 who served in the campaigns of 1809 and 1815 against 

 Nepaul/ Kirkpatrick, whose Description of Nepaul 

 (1811) made us acquainted with the eastern, and 

 Fraser, who has given an account of the western 

 part of these Indian Alps ; but, in 1819, Francis 

 Hamilton gave a complete picture of this country. 

 Fraser published his journal in 1820 Journal of a 

 Tour through a Part of the Snowy Range of the 

 Himala Mountains, and to the Sources of the Rivers 

 Jumna and Ganges (with twenty engravings). Cole- 

 brooke and captain Webb made the first barometrical 

 and trigonometrical measurements of the Himala 

 mountains, but with imperfect instruments. Accord- 

 ing to their account, the height of the White moun- 

 tain, or Dhawala-Giri, the Mont Blanc of the Indian 

 Alps, at whose foot the river Ghandaki rises (29 

 30' north lat., 83 45' east Ion.), is 26,872 feet, or, 

 according to Blake, who corrected their measure- 

 ments, 28,015. In the chain of the Andes, Chimbo- 

 razo is 21,440 feet high ; in the Alps, the most 

 elevated summit, Mont Blanc, is 15,766 feet high. 

 The lowest line of perpetual snow, on the north side 

 of the Himala mountains, is 17,000 feet ; on Chim- 

 borazo, 15,746 ; on the Alps, 8,300 feet. The highest 

 point of the Himalaya which captain Gerard reached 

 the Chipea-Pic on the borders of Chinese Tartary, 

 was 19,411 English feet; on Chimborazo, Hum boldt 

 reached a height of 19,374 English feet. Webb also 

 determined the height of twenty-seven other summits 

 of the Himalaya, the greatest part of which he found 

 to be above 20,000 feet, and the highest to be 25,769 

 feet above the level of the sea. Captain Hodgson 

 and lieutenant Herbert took trigonometrical measure- 

 ments of the whole central chain of the Hbiala 

 mountains. Among thirty-eight summits, the highest 

 Jawahir was 25,589, and the lowest was 16,043 feet 

 high ; and more than twenty peaks were higher than 

 Chimborazo. They lie between 30 80 7 and 28 49f 

 north lat., and 78 51' and 80 54' east Ituu 



