xii Report of the Miner alogical Survey [No. 126*. 



considered as the bounding limit, and that every point within this line 

 was entitled to the above appellation. 



7. Captain Webb, amongst others, appears to have fallen into 

 this mistake in assigning the bed of the Sutlej (14,000 feet) as the 

 lowest level of the plateau, 2 whereas the bed of the Sutlej belongs 

 to the Sinditic Basin, (so in MSS. qu : Inditic ?) and is consequently part 

 of the barrier zone which surrounds the central tract. In like manner, 

 the country visited by Captain Turner, and commonly known as Thibet, 

 the description of which is generally adopted as that applicable to the 

 interior, must be considered also as part of the mountain barrier, since 

 it is watered by the streams or feeders of the Sanpo ; which if it be not 

 the Burampooter, must be either the Kiendun, or the Irrawaddy. 



8. Considered [as a question] of Physical Geography, [the true~] line 

 of boundary is undoubtedly the chain of water-heads, and this is by 

 no means synonimous with the line of greatest elevation. 4 It may be 

 that the central tract is not of such great elevation as has too hastily 

 been presumed. It may be that this presumption is correct ; the moun- 

 tain barrier which surrounds it serving, as in the [case] of the Ghats of 

 Malwa, 5 to [support] a high table land of tolerably even surface. But 

 however this be, it is not the less necessary to avoid confounding the 

 boundary tract of mountain land with the central included area. 



9. Of other particulars we are equally ignorant ; what its rivers are, if 

 any ; and whither they flow ; some we do know [contribute to] certain 



2 The Quarterly Review in reporting this fact, has not noticed the error. But this 

 wovk has never been celebrated for its disquisitions on physical or mathematical sub- 

 jects. In this particular article, and the abusive one on the same subject which 

 called for it, they are particularly open to censure. The two productions form an 

 amusing contrast. 



3 The latter is D'Anville's opinion, the former RennePs. The great mistake into 

 which this acute geographer fell regarding the course of the Sutlej and Ganges, na- 

 turally makes one distrustful of his authority on this point. The little light which the 

 employment of our troops to the Eastward has thrown on the subject, tends to add 

 strength to these doubts. 



4 This remark is not unnecessary, for it is a mistake made by many, who conceive 

 that because the source of a river must of necessity be higher than any part of its bed, 

 therefore all the elevations in its immediate neighbourhood must be higher than those 

 situated near a more advanced part of its course. 



5. There is not however the analogy of geological structure to make this conclusion 

 probable. Malwa is of the trap or overlying formation one which has derived its 

 name from this peculiarity of structure, whereas all the evidence we have on the sub- 

 ject tends to support the opinion of this great circular barrier being composed by 

 primary rocks. 



