1833.) and Dr. Gerard, from Péshdwar to Bokhara. 7 
geography) is unknown by that name, and amidst the confusion of such 
unmeaning designations as Hindi Kush, Caucasus, Suféd Koh (White 
Mountain), as if snowy mountains should be any other color: to be sure, 
we have heard of red, to which the map adds blue mountains, white moun- 
tains, cloudy mountains, and black mountains (see the map in the octavo 
edition of Elphinstone’s Kabul); besides Taghs and Tukhts, innumera- 
ble; and lastly, Parapamisus, which is a fine sounding name, but it 
unfortunately happens not to exist; there are also Kara or black moun- 
tains, which arealso salt. Is not all this too bad ?—In seeking for the 
continuity of the Himalaya, we must go north of Ladak, and the sources 
of the Oxus, where a vast tract of lofty summits will be found to trend 
towards the skirts of Yarkund, and somewhere near the heads of the 
Oxus and Jaxartes, to define the slope of the country to the north- 
west; this will bring the high plateaux, north of the Indus, within 
more precise limits. All this tract, which is by no means very remote, 
is still unseen by the eye of civilised man. 
«The Bits of Bamean represent a man and woman of colossal mag- 
nitude, carved in the cliff of the ridge that bounds the valley on the 
east. On approaching them, I saw from the very look of the hills, that 
they could only be moulded in some soft calcareous substance; yet a 
very intelligent man, a Haji Baba, who was with Moorcroft at the spot, 
insisted that the figures were in the solid rock, which would indeed 
have been an anomaly, as the whole of the neighbouring hills and the 
dell itself is a diluvial, perhaps an alluvial, deposit of mud, clay, and 
conglomerate. I was certain in my opinion, and took a bet of 100 groats 
to one, with the old Haji, that they were mud, and so they proved 
to be. <A piece of a toe, or part of the nose of one, will decide their 
structure : it isnot gypsum. Though it is rather a disappointment to find 
mud instead of granite, still these idols are very curious objects, both 
with regard to antiquity, and as memorials of an epoch, the history of 
which eludes our research. The written accounts, if they are not 
vitiated by mythological figures, assign their formation (creation) to 
the year 56 before the Christian era, which is far from extravagant, 
considering the nature of the records (Mahabharat), which give that 
date ; but without attending to these, it is almost certain, that they existed 
before the time of Muhammed, and when the country was possessed by 
the kafirs under the dominion of Zohak, whose reign was antecedent to 
Christianity—These august idols were mutilated both by Timur the 
Great and by Nadir Shah : the former discharged arrows, and the latter 
fired shots at them. Some faint traditions of Alexander the Great are 
in the mouths of some of the inhabitants ; but there are so many Sikan- 
