480 Route of two Nepalese Embassies to Pekin. [No. 6. 



After an attentive perusal of these interesting speculations I 

 must, however, confess that I retain my priorly expressed opinion 

 that the great points in question are inextricably involved with, and 

 consequently can never be settled independently of, the larger ques- 

 tion of the true physical features of the whole of the bam-i-dunya 

 of Asiatics and Asie Centrale of Humboldt. It may he that the 

 Himalaya is not a chain at all, but an exemplification of the truth 

 of Elie de Beaumont's theory that so-called mountain chains are only 

 parallel dispositions of a series of geological nceuds which, if laid 

 side by side, constitute the semblance of a chain of longitude, and, 

 if laid one over the other, constitute the semblance of a chain of 

 latitude or a meridional range. 



It may be that the Himalaya is not a longitudinal but a meri- 

 dional chain, and that the geological back-bone of the whole conti- 

 nent of Asia does not run parallel to the greatest development of 

 that continent or east and west, but transversely to that develop- 

 ment or north and south, and that the Khin gan ula is an indi- 

 cation of the northern extremity of this back -bone ; the Gangri or 

 water-shed of the Indus and Brahmaputra, an indication of its 

 southern extremity. 



It may be that the question of the water-shed is not to be regarded 

 with reference to the adjacent countries only, but, as Guyot and 

 others affirm, with reference to the whole eastern half of the conti- 

 nent of Asia ; and that the southern part of Tibet, inclusive of the 

 Himalaya, is to be regarded as sheding the waters of Eastern Asia 

 from the Arctic to the Indian Ocean. Such things, or some one 

 of them, I repeat, may be, and one of the theories just enumerated 

 may involve the true solution of questions for some time past inves- 

 tigated and debated on the frontier of India, though without any 

 sufficiently distinct reference to those theories, prior though they 

 all be in date. But the mere statement of them suffices, I should 

 say, to show that they will not find their solution on that frontier, 

 but only when the whole bam-i-diinya (dome of the world, a fine 

 orientalism) has become accessible to science. 



In the meanwhile, without seeking to deny that many facts* 



* Per contra, the numerous determinations of the height of the ghats at far 

 distant points seem to warrant our assuming 17000 feet for the mean elevation of 



