1842.] of the Himmalaya Mountains, xxvii 



42. The above list, if it were thought necessary, might be much 

 increased. It is very true that they are nearly consequences of the 

 manner in which these peaks are disposed, but it is this very disposition 

 which is so singular, and worthy of remark. It is the extraordinary 

 elevation above the ground on which they immediately stand that is so 

 striking to a traveller within these mountains, because it is at once 

 taken in by the eye, and requires no consideration to aid the effect. It is 

 different with summits placed on an elevated table land, where we 

 are continually obliged to remember the height of the latter, and 

 even with this assistance, they fail to astonish and confound the imagina- 

 tion in the degree that a nearer view of the Himmalaya is found to do. 26 



43. I must remark here, that the instances given above, belong to a 

 fact which is general throughout these mountains, and which as it is 

 very striking, and seems capable of throwing some light on the mode of 

 their origin, ought not to be passed over. It is this : wherever the sepa- 

 rating ridge of two river vallies approaches the banks of one of them, 

 there is its highest point ; and where it holds a middle course for any 

 distance, it is there found to be lowest ; equally throughout the higher 

 and the lower mountains will this remark be found to hold good, nor am 

 I aware of a single exception to it. 



44. But it is chiefly as snow-clad summits on the border of the 

 Torrid Zone that these mountains have attracted attention. It is pro- 

 bable that but for this phenomenon, their elevation would have remain- 

 ed to this day a desideratum. To the inhabitant of the plains, who 

 being under a summer temperature of nearly 100°, is exhausted with 

 heat, it is certainly a phenomenon full of wonder. To those too who 

 consider the heat to be in the sun's rays, (the bulk of common observers,) 

 the wonder must be greatly increased, as the summit of the mountain 

 is nearer by five miles to the sun than the plains at its foot ; even the 

 scientific observer cannot entirely divest himself of that feeling of ad- 

 miration, which the sight of any thing so unusual to his common ex- 

 depth and extreme narrowness, are very striking. M. Humboldt mentions several of 

 these, one of which though it be not 3,U00 feet across, is yet upwards of 4,000 feet deep. 

 Captain Hall too, notices the depth and steepness of the ravines or quebrados of Chili. 



26 But as these mountains are elevated on the high plain of Quito, which is eleva- 

 ted farther above the sea than the top of the Pyrenees, and constitutes more than one- 

 third of the computed height, they are inferior in actual elevation to Mont Blanc. 

 See Iiees' Cyclopaedia, Art. Andes. 



