70 VIEWS OF NATUEE. 



compare my determinations of the heights of perpetual snow 

 in the Cordilleras of Quito or the mountains of Mexico, with 

 any results obtained in India. The important travels o! 

 Turner, Davis, and Saunders to the highlands of Thibet, were 

 indeed accomplished in the year 1783; but the intelligent 

 Colebrooke justly observed that the height of the Schamalari 

 (28 5 ; north latitude, 89 30' east longitude, somewhat north 

 of Tassisudan), as given by Turner, rested on a foundation quite 

 as slight as the assumed measurements of the heights seen 

 from Patna and Kafiristan by Colonel Crawford and Lieutenant 

 Macartney.* The admirable labours of Webb, Hodgson. 

 Herbert, and the brothers Gerard, have indeed thrown con- 

 siderable light on the question concerning the heights of the 

 colossal summits of the Himalaya; but yet, in 1808, the 

 hypsometric knowledge of the East Indian mountain chains 

 was still so uncertain, that Webb wrote to Colebrooke, " The 

 height of the Himalaya still remains undetermined. It is 

 true that I have ascertained that the summits visible from 

 the elevated plains of Rohilkand are 21,000 feet higher than 

 that plateau, but we are ignorant of their absolute height 

 above the sea." 



In the year 1820 it first began to be currently reported m 

 Europe that there were not only much higher summits in the 

 Himalaya than in the Cordilleras, but that Webb had seen in 

 the pass of Niti, and Moorcroft in the Thibetian plateau of 

 Daba, and the sacred lakes, fine corn-fields and fertile pasture- 

 lands at elevations far exceeding the height of Mont Blanc. 

 This announcement was received in England with great incre- 

 dulity, and opposed by doubts regarding the influence of 

 the refraction of light. I have shown the unsoundness of 

 such doubts in two printed treatises on the mountains of 

 India, in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique. The Tyro- 

 lese Jesuit, Father Tiefenthaler, who in 1766 penetrated as far 

 as the provinces of Kemaun and Nepal, had already divined 

 the importance of the Dhawalagiri. We read on his map: 

 "Monies Albi, qui Indis Dolaghir, nive obsiti." Captain 

 Webb always employs the same name. Until the measure- 

 ments of the Djawahir (30 22' north latitude, and 79 58* 



* Compare Turner in the Asiatic Researches, vol. xii. p. 234, with 

 Elphinstone, Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, 1815, p. 95, ami 

 Francis Hamilton, Account of Nepal, 1819, p. 92. 



