INFLUENCE OF THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGNS. 157 



the geographical knowledge of the Greeks was doubled in ex- 

 tent in the course of a few years. In order to define more 

 accurately that which we have termed the mass of materials 

 added to the sciences of natural philosophy and physical geog- 

 raphy by the different campaigns and by the colonial institu- 

 tions of Alexander, I would first refer to the diversity in the 

 form of the earth's crust, which has, however, only been more 

 specially made known to us by the experiments and researches 

 of recent times. In the countries through which he passed, 

 low lands, deserts, and salt steppes devoid of vegetation (as on 

 the north of the Asferah chain, which is a continuation of the 

 Thian-schan, and the four large cultivated alluvial districts 

 of the Euphrates, the Indus, Oxus, and Jaxartes), contrasted 

 with snow-clad mountains, having an elevation of nearly 

 20,000 feet. The Hindoo-Coosh, or Indian Caucasus of the 

 Macedonians, which is a continuation of the North Thibetian 

 Kuen-lun, west of the south transverse chain of Bolor, is di- 

 vided in its prolongation toward Herat into two great chains 

 bounding Kafiristan,* the southern of which is the loftier of 

 the two. Alexander passed over the plateau of Bamian, 

 which lies at an elevation of about 8500 feet, and in which 

 men supposed they had found the cave of Prometheus,! to the 

 crest of the Kohibaba, and beyond Kabura along the Choes, 

 crossing the Indus somevv^hat to the north of the present At- 

 tok. A comparison between the low Tauric chain, with 

 which the Greeks were familiar, and the eternal snow sur- 

 mounting the range of the Hindoo-Coosh, and which, accord- 

 ing to Burnes, begins at an elevation of 13,000 feet, must 

 have given occasion to a recognition, on a more colossal scale, 

 of the superposition of difierent zones of climate and vegeta- 

 tion. In active minds direct contact with the elementary 

 world produces the most vivid impression on the senses. And 

 thus we find that Strabo has described, in the most perfectly 

 truthful characters, the passage across the mountainous dis- 

 trict of the Paropanisadse, where the army with difficulty 

 cleared a passage through the snow, and where arborescent 

 vegetation had ceased.^ 



* I have considered these intricate orographical relations in my Asie 

 Centrale, t. ii., p. 429-434. 



t Lassen, in the Zeitschrift fur die Kiinde des Morgenl., bd. i.. s. 230. 



X The country between Bamian and Ghori. See Carl Zimmer- 

 mann's excellent orographical work Uebersichtsblatt von Afghanistan, 

 1842. (Compare Strabo, lib. xv., p. 725 ; Diod. Sicul., xvii., 82 ; Menn. 

 Meletem. Hist., 1839, p. 2.5 and 31; Ritter, Ueber Alexanders Fddziig 

 am Indischcn Kavkasus, in the Abkandl. der Berl. Aknd.. of tln^ \c;u 



