522 COSMOS. 



colonial institutions of Alexander, I would first refer to 

 the diversity in the form of the earth's crust which Las, 

 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 Kouen Lun, west of the south trans- 

 verse chain of Bolor, is divided in its prolongation towards 

 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 

 Prometheusf, to the crest of the Kohibaba, and beyond 

 Kabura along the Choes, crossing the Indus somewhat to the 

 north of the present Attok. A comparison between the low 

 Tauric chain, with which the Greeks were familiar, and the 

 eternal snow surmounting the range of the Hindoo Coosh, and 

 which, according to Btirnes, begins at an elevation of 13,000 

 feet, must have given occasion to a recognition, on a more 

 colossal scale, of the superposition of different zones of climate 

 and vegetation. In active minds direct contact \vith the ele- 

 mentary world produces the most vivid impression on the senses. 

 And thus we find that Strabo has described, in the most per- 

 fectly truthful characters, the passage across the mountainous 

 district of the Paropanisadse, where the army with difficulty 

 cleared a passage through the snow, and where arborescent 

 vegetation had ceased. J 



* I have considered these intricate orographical relations in my Asie 

 eentrale, t. ii. pp. 429-434. 



T Lassen, in the Zeitschriftfiir die Kunde des MorgenL, bd. i. s. 230. 



The country between Bamian and Ghori. See Carl Zimmermann's 

 excellent orographical work Uebersichtsblatt von Afghanistan, 1842; 

 (compare Strabo, lib. xv. p. 725; Diod. Sicul., xvii. 82; Menn, Meletem. 

 hist., 1839, pp. 25 and 31; Hitter, Ueber Alexanders Feldzug am Indi- 

 Bchen Kaukasus, in the Abhandl der Berl. Akad., of the year 1829, s, 

 150; Droysen, Bildung des hellenist. Staatensy stems, s. 614). I write, 

 Paropanisus, as it occurs in all the good codices of Ptolemy, and not Par* 



