NOTES. Cxlv 



volcanic district of La Guiolle, near the Monts d'Aubrac, north-west of Chirac. 

 Compare the Carte ge'ologique de France, 1841. 



C 87 ) p. 414. Humboldt, Asie Centrale, t. ii. p. 761, 216, and 335 

 364; Kosmos, Bd. i. S. 254 (English edition, p. 232, 233). I find the Alpine 

 lake of Issikul, on the northern slope of the Thian-schan, which has only 

 recently been reached by Russian travellers, already marked on the celebrated 

 Catalonian Map of 1374, which is preserved as a gem among the manuscripts 

 of the Paris library. Strahlenberg, in his work entitled " Der nordliche und 

 ostliche Theil von Europa und Asien" (Stockholm, 1730, S. 327), has the merit 

 of having been the first to represent the Thian-schan as an independent chain, 

 but without recognising in it volcanic activity. He gave it the very indefinite 

 name of Mousart, which, inasmuch as the Bolor chain had the general un- 

 individualising name of Mustag, signifying snow, gave occasion for another 

 century to erroneous representations and a bad and contradictory set of names 

 for the mountain ranges north of the Himalaya, causing the chains which follow 

 parallels of latitude, and those which follow the direction of the meridian, to be 

 confounded with each other. Mousart is a corruption of the Tartar word Muz- 

 tag, which has the same meaning as our Snow mountains, Sierra Nevada of the 

 Spaniards; Himalaya in the Institutes of Menu, habitation (alaya) of snow 

 (Mma); and the Sine-schan of the Chinese. Eleven hundred years before 

 Strahlenberg, under the dynasty of the Sui, in the time of the Frankish king 

 Dagobert, the Chinese possessed maps, constructed by the order of their govern- 

 ment, of the countries from the Yellow Eiver to the Caspian Sea, on which the 

 Kuen-lun and the Thian-schan were drawn. As I think I have shown elsewhere 

 (Asie Centrale, t. i. p. 118129, 194203, and t. ii. p. 413 to 425), it was 

 these two ranges of mountains, and especially the first, which, when the march 

 of the Macedonian armies brought the Greeks into nearer acquaintanceship with 

 the interior of Asia, spread among their geographers the knowledge of a belt of 

 mountains dividing the continent into two parts, and extending from Asia Minor 

 to the Eastern Sea, from India and Scythia to Thinje. (Strabo, lib. i. pag. 68, 

 lib. xi. pag. 490.) Dicsearchus, and after him Eratosthenes, called this chain 

 the prolongation of the Taurus. The Himalayas were included in this designa- 

 tion. Strabo says expressly (lib. xv. pag. 689), " India is bounded on the north, 

 from Ariana to the Eastern Sea, by the extremities of the Taurus, which the 

 natives call severally Paropamisos, Emodon, Imaon, and other names, but which 

 the Macedonians call Caucasus." He had said previously (lib. xi. pag. 519), in 

 the description of Bactriana and Sogdiana: " The last part of the Taurus, which 

 is called Imaon, touches the Indian (Eastern ?) Sea." The names of " beyond" 

 and " within the Taurus " referred to the belief in what was supposed to be a 

 VOL. IV. k 



