1866.] Tableau of High Asia. 61 
Feet. 
Kastern Andes of Bolivia,... ee ae 1 LOs900 
Western Andes of Bolivia, Nie ee S500) 
Andes of Quito, ... ae sho. eas JRO TRO 
For the Alps, my brothers obtained : 
Southern slopes, et ae bes) SAUD 
Northern slopes... a 8, 900 
Hxtremes (near the Mont Elon and Monte 
Rosa group), ws uh 95300) 
3. Glaciers. 
The existence of the glaciers of High Asia was first made known 
for Western Tibet, by Vigne, who alludes to them repeatedly in his 
“Travels in Kashmir,” London, 1842. Colonel Richard Strachey 
was the first* who Gn 1847) proved their existence in the Himélaya. 
The recent date of this discovery will appear the more surprising, 
when the immense number of glaciers now positively ascertained to be 
in this region is taken into consideration. The great amount of ice 
to be met with, even in lower elevations of the Himalaya, could not 
of course escape the observation of previous travellers; these masses, 
” and to 
however, they used to designate as ‘“‘ hard, frozen snow-beds, 
consider them as local phenomena, analogous to remains of avalanches. 
On both sides of the Karakorim and the Kiunlin, we also found 
glaciers, having forms identical with those of the Alps, and following 
the same laws of motion. Some of them are considerably larger than 
the glaciers in Hurope. The Aletsch glacier in the Alps extends a 
little over fifteen miles in length, whilst some of the glaciers, surveyed 
by Captain Montgomerie and his party in Balti (on the southern side 
of the Karakoram)” boast of no less than thirty-six miles in length, 
with a breadth of from one to two and a half miles. The Bidfo 
glacier forms, with the glacier on the opposite slope towards Migeair, 
a continuous river of ice of sixty-four miles running in an almost 
straight line, and without any break in its continuity beyond those 
of the ordinary crevasses of glaciers. The Biafo glacier is supplied in 
a great measure from a vast dome of ice and snow, about one hundred 
and eighty square miles in area, in the whole of which only a few pro- 
jecting points of wall are visible. The Balsoro main glacier, thirty- 
* See this Journal, Vol. XVI, part II. p. 794; Vol. XVII, part II. p. 203, 
