436 LOOKING DOWN FROM GREAT ALTITUDES. 



present to prospects of great mountains seen in the 

 distance from the plain below. As pictures it may 

 be that some of these may actually be the finest of 

 all ; and as such they are almost always selected by artists, 

 in preference to those looking downwards, from above. 

 But to our mind there is nothing that comes up to 

 the spacious grandeur of the immense, almost illimit- 

 able areas of terrestrial expanse that can be witnessed, 

 under favourable conditions, from the great altitudes. 

 The sublimity of such prospects can hardly fail to 

 impress even the most casual observer. 



Nor is the feeling of awe with which, even un- 

 consciously to ourselves, we look down from one of 

 these altitudes upon the splendid panorama of the 

 world unfolded beneath, by any means an unnatural 

 one; on the contrary, nowhere does the greatness 

 of the Creator appear more strikingly apparent 

 nor the littleness of man in comparison so complete. 

 There can be no doubt that it was this feeling 

 which prompted the Buddhists to select for their 

 temples these commanding positions of which we 

 have spoken ; from whence, according to the figurative 

 metaphor used more than once in Scripture, " all the 

 kingdoms of the earth, and the glory of them " are 

 visible. 



Many such positions, commanding an apparently 

 boundless prospect, may be found upon the slopes of 

 the Himalayas, the Andes, and even upon mariy smaller 

 mountain ranges. Mr. Vigne, an early English tra- 

 veller in Kashmir for instance, thus describes one of 

 them, 



" I well remember (he says) descending upon Chinini, after 

 my last journey to Little Thibet. I had not seen the plains 



