90 STEPPES AND DESEKTS. 



ness; and I could not therefore compare my determinations of the 

 height of perpetual snow in the Cordilleras of Quito, or the mount- 

 ains of Mexico, with any corresponding determinations in the East. 

 The important journey of Turner/ Davis, and Saunders to the 

 highlands of Thibet does indeed belong to the year 1783, but Cole- 

 brooke justly remarks, that the elevation given by Turner to the 

 Schamalari (lat, 28 5', long. 89 30', a -little, to the north of Tassi- 

 sudan) rests on foundations as slight as those of the so-called mea- 

 surements of the heights seen from Patna and the Kafiristan by 

 Colonel Crawford and Lieutenant Macartney. (Compare Turner, in 

 the Asiatic Researches, vol. xii. p. 234, with Elphinstone's Account 

 of the Kingdom of Caubul, 1815, p. 95, and Francis Hamilton, 

 Account of Nepal, 1819, p. 92.) The excellent observations and 

 writings of Webb, Hodgson, Herbert, and the brothers Gerard, have 

 thrown great and certain light on the elevation of the colossal sum- 

 mits of the Himalaya; yet, in 1808, the hypsometric knowledge of 

 this great Indian chain was still so uncertain that Webb wrote to 

 Colebrooke : " The height of the Himalaya still remains a problem. 

 I find, indeed, that the summits visible from the high plain of Rohil- 

 cund are 21,000 English feet above that plain, but we do not know 

 the absolute height above the sea/' 



It was not until the beginning of the year 1820 that it began to 

 be reported in Europe, that not only were there, in the Himalaya, 

 summits much higher than those of the Cordilleras, but also that 

 Webb had seen in the Pass of Niti, and Moorcroft in the Thibetian 

 plateau of Daba and the Sacred Lakes, fine pastures and nourishing 

 fields of corn, at altitudes far exceeding the height of Mont Blanc. 

 These accounts were received in England with much incredulity, and 

 were met by doubts respecting the influence of refraction. I have 

 shown the groundlessness of these doubts in two memoirs (Sur les 

 Montagnes de 1'Inde), printed in the Annales de China ie et de 

 Physique. The Tyrolese Jesuit, P. Tiefenthaler, who in 1766 pene- 

 trated into the provinces of Kemaun and Nepal, had already divined 

 the importance of the Dhawalagiri. We read on his map, " Montes 

 Albi, qui Indis Dolaghir, nive obsiti." Captain Webb always uses 

 the same name. Until the measurements of the Djawahir (lat. 30 

 22', long. 79 58', altitude 4027 toises, or 25,750 English feet) 



