438 COSMOS. 



from 12 to 16 miles in a south-westerly direction from 

 Margen, took place in January 1721. The mounds of scoriae 

 thrown out on that occasion, according to the report of the 

 persons sent by the Emperor Kanghi to investigate the cir- 

 cumstances, were 24 geographical miles in circumference ; it 

 was likewise mentioned that a stream of lava, damming up 

 the water of the river Udelin, had formed a lake. In the 

 7th century of our era the Bo-shan is said to have had a 

 previous igneous eruption. Its distance from the sea is 

 about 420 geographical miles, similar to that of the Him- 

 alaya/ 8 so that it is upwards of three times more distant than 



B It is not in the Himalaya range, near the sea (some portions of it 

 between the colossai Kunchinjinga and Shamalari, approach the shore 

 of the Bay of Bengal within 428 aud 376 geographical miles), that the 

 volcanic action has first burst forth, but in the third, or interior, 

 parallel chain, the Thian-shan, nearly four times as far removed from 

 the same shore, and that under very special circumstances, the subsi- 

 dence of ground in the neighbourhood deranging strata and causing 

 fissures. We learn from the study of the geographical works of the 

 Chinese, first instigated by me and afterwards continued by my friend 

 Stanislas Julien, that the Kuen-lun, the northern boundary range of 

 Tibet, the Tsi-shi-shan of the Mongols, also possesses in the hill of 

 Shin-Khieu a cavern emitting uninterrupted flames (Asie Centrale, t. ii, 

 pp. 427 467 and 483). The phenomenon seems to be quite analogous 

 to the Chimasra in Lycia, which has now been burning for several 

 thousands of years (see above, p. 256 7, and note 51) ; it is not a 

 volcano, but a fire-spring, diffusing to a great distance an agreeable 

 odour (probably from containing r aphtha?). The Kuen-liin which, 

 like me in the Asie Centrale (t. i, p. 127 and t. ii, p. 431), Dr. Thomas 

 Thomson, the learned botanist of Western Tibet (Flora Indica, 1855, 

 p. 253), describes as a continuation of the Hindu-Kho, which is 

 joined from the south-east by the Himalaya chain, approaches this 

 chain at its western extremity to such a degree that my excellent 

 friend, Adolph Schlagintweit, designates " the Kuen-liin and the 

 Himalaya on the west side of the Indus, not as separate chains, but 

 as one mass of mountains." (Report No. ix of the Magnetic Survey in 

 India ly Ad. Schlagintweit, 1856, p. 61). In the whole extent towards 

 the east, however, as far as 92 20' east longitude, in the direction of 

 the starry lake, the Kuen-liin forms, as was shown so early as the 7th 

 century of our era by minute descriptions given under the Dynasty of 

 Sai (Klaproth, Tableaux Historiques de I' Asie, p. 204), an independent 

 chain running east and west parallel to the Himalaya at a distance of 

 about 7^ degrees of latitude. The brothers Hermann and Robert 

 Schlagintweit are the first who have had the courage and the good 

 fortune to traverse the chain of the Kuen-liin, setting out from Ladak 

 and reaching the territory of Khotau in the months of July and Sep- 

 tember, 1856. According to their observations, which are always 



