ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 95 



Ilindu-Coosh, or the Caucasus, had been measured with any 

 exactness ; and I could not therefore compare my determi- 

 nations of the height of perpetual snow in the Cordilleras of 

 Quito, or the mountains of Mexico, with any corresponding 

 determinations in the East. The important journey of 

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

 does indeed belong to the year 1783, but Colebrooke justly 

 remarks, that the elevation given by Turner to the Schama- 

 lari (lat. 28 5', long. 89 30', a little to the north of Tassi- 

 sudan) rests on foundations as slight as those of the so-called 

 measurements of the heights seen from Patna and the 

 Kafiristan by Colonel Crawford and Lieutenant Macartney. 

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

 with Elphinstone's Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, 

 1815, p. 95, and Francis Hamilton, Account of Nepal, 

 1819, p. 92.) The excellent observations and writings of 

 "Webb, Hodgson, Herbert, and the brothers Gerard, have 

 thrown great and certain light on the elevation of the co- 

 lossal summits of the Himalaya; yet, in 1808, the hypso- 

 metric knowledge of this great Indian chain was still so 

 uncertain that Webb wrote to Colebrooke : " The height of 

 the Himalaya still remains a problem. I find, indeed, that 

 the summits visible from the high plain of Eohilcund are 

 21000 English feet above that plain, but we do not know 

 the absolute height above the sea." 



It was not until the beginning of the year 1820 that it 

 began to be reported in Europe, that not only were there in 

 the Himalaya, summits much higher than those of the 

 Cordilleras, but also that Webb had seen in the Pass of Niti, 



