ILLUSTRATIONS (10). MOUNTAIN CHAINS OF ASIA. G9 



betian highlands the same north-westerly direction as the 

 Himalaya. 



Here are situated the Djawahir, whose height was long 

 since accurately determined at 26,902 feet, and the Alpine 

 valley of Caschmere (never visited by winds or storms), where, 

 at an elevation of only 5346 feet, lies the lake of Wulur, 

 which freezes every winter, and whose surface is never 

 broken by a single ripple. 



After considering the four great mountain systems of Asia, 

 which, in their normal geognostic character, are true parallel 

 chains, we must turn to the long series of alternating eleva- 

 tions following a direction from north to south, and which 

 extend from Cape Comorin, opposite to the island of Ceylon, 

 to the Icy Sea, alternating between the parallels of 66 and 

 77 east longitude, from S.S.E. to N.N.W. To this system 

 of meridian chains, whose alternations remind us of faults 

 in veins, belong the Ghauts, the Soliman chain, the Paralasa, 

 the Bolor, and the Ural range. This interruption of the 

 profile of the elevation is so constituted, that each new chain 

 begins in a degree of latitude beyond that to which the 

 preceding one had attained, all alternating successively in 

 an opposite direction. The importance which the Greeks (pro- 

 bably not earlier than the second century of our era) attached 

 to these chains running from north to south, induced Agatho- 

 da3mon and Ptolemy (Tab. vii. et viii.) to regard the Bolor 

 under the name of Imaus as an axis of elevation, which 

 extended as far as 62 north latitude into the basin of the 

 lower Irtysch and Obi.* 



As the vertical height of mountain summits above the 

 sea's level (however unimportant the phenomenon of the more 

 or less extensive folding of the crust of a planetary sphero 

 may be in the eyes of geognosists) will always continue, like 

 all that is difficult of attainment, to be an object of general 

 curiosity, the present would appear to furnish a fitting place 

 for the introduction of an historical notice relative to the gra- 

 dual advance of hypsometric knowledge. When I returned to 

 Europe in 1804, after an absence of four years, not one of 

 the high snow-crowned summits of Asia (in the Himalaya, 

 the Hindoo-Coosh, or the Caucasus) had been yet measured 

 with any degree of accuracy. I was unable, therefore, to 

 * Asie centrale, t. i. pp. 138, 154, 198; t. ii. p. 367. 



