Chap. I.] general description oe area. 7 



scenery of the Sub- Himalayan hills has few attractions. Near the gorges 

 of the great rivers, or where the view opens out upon the duns, and the 

 higher hills beyond, the landscape is often striking ; but among the hills 

 themselves the range of vision is generally limited to a few yards ; the 

 only paths are along the beds of torrents, hemmed in either by sheer 

 walls of rocks, or by steep banks densely covered with jungle. 



The snowy peaks of the Eastern Himalaya form by no means so regular 



a range as might be supposed. They form groups 



of summits along a culminating zone, rather than 



any approach to a regular ridge. This feature has been well described 



by Herbert, Strachey, and others. 



The most opposite views have been put forward as to the relations of 



the Eastern and Western Himalayas. Captain 

 Contrast between East- 

 ern and Western Hima- Herbert, in his mineralogical survey of the Hima- 

 laya. 



laya, is strangely confused in this matter of ranges. 



He lays down the Simla ridge as the proper continuation of the Eastern 

 snowy range, consistently giving as his criterion the fact of its being the 

 watershed of the Sutlej and the Ganges ; yet, in speaking of the other 

 transverse ridges, parallel to the Simla ridge, he says : — " Like the princi- 

 pal chain they cease suddenly, nor is there any trace either in the Doab 

 or in Rohilcund of a continuation of them, however obscure" (Jour. As. 

 Soc, Ben., No. 126, p. 17). Adopting wider views on the subject, but 

 still only such as are within the ken of the physical geographer, Colonel 

 Cunningham considers the Bara Lacha range, bounding Chumba and 

 Kashmir on the north, as the continuation of the 'true' Himalaya (Cun- 

 ningham's ' Ladak,' p. 42). If such relations as those of drainage system, 

 ethnography, climatology, &c, are to be the criteria in determining 

 the continuity of these ranges, east and west, this view is no doubt 

 correct, for these in a great measure depend upon the one unquestionable 

 fact that the Bara Lacha range is the culminating ridge. But not even 

 this latter fact is of much weight in establishing' the inference that these 



