88 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



toises (2558 English feet), until, north of Teheran, it rises again to 

 a height of 2295 toises (14,675 English feet) in the volcano of 

 Dem a vend. 



4. The mountain system of the Himalaya. The normal direction 

 of this system is east and west when followed from 81 to 97 E. 

 long, from Greenwich, or through more than fifteen degrees of longi- 

 tude from the colossal Dhawalagiri (4390 toises, 28,071 English 

 feet) to the breaking through of the long-problematical Dzangbo- 

 tschu river (the Irawaddy^ according to Dalrymple and Klaproth), 

 and to the chains running north and south, which cover the whole 

 of Western China, and in the provinces of Sse-tschuan, Hu-kuang, 

 and Kuang-si form the great mountain group of the sources of the 

 Kiang. The next highest culminating point to the Dhawalagiri, of 

 this east and west part of the Himalaya, is not, as has been hitherto 

 supposed, the eastern peak of the Schamalari, but the Kinchinjinga. 

 This mountain is situated in the meridian of Sikhim, between Bootan 

 and Nepaul, and between the Schamalari (3750? toises, 23,980 En- 

 glish feet) and the Dhawalagiri : its height is 4406 toises, or 26,438 

 Parisian, or 28,174 English feet. It was first measured accurately 

 . by trigonometrical operations in the present year, and as the account 

 of this measurement received by me from India says decidedly, 

 "that a new determination of the Dhawalagiri leaves to the latter 

 the first rank among all the snow-capped mountains of the Hima- 

 laya," the height of the Dhawalagiri must necessarily be greater 

 than that of 4390 toises, or 26,340 Parisian, 28,071 English feet, 

 hitherto ascribed to it. (Letter- of the accomplished botanist of Sir 

 James Ross's Antarctic Expedition, Dr. Joseph Hooker, written from 

 Dorjiling, July 25, 1848.) The turning point in the direction of 

 the axis of the Himalaya range is not far. from the Dhawalagiri, in 

 79 E/long. from Paris (81 22' Greenwich). From thence to the 

 westward, the Himalaya no longer runs east and west, but from SE. 

 to NW., connecting itself, as a great cross vein, between Mozuffer- 

 abad and Gilgit south of Kafiristan, with a part of the Hindu-Coosh. 

 Such a bend or change in the direction or strike of the axis of ele- 

 vation of the Himalaya (from E.-W. to SB. NW.), doubtless points, 

 as in the western part of our European Alps, to a difference in the 

 age or epoch of elevation. The course of the Upper Indus, from 



