PHYSICAL FEATURES. 1 7 



Austen 1 has tried to trace the various lines of ranges continuously 

 along the entire extent of the Himalayas from the Indus to the Bra- 

 maputra, and in a diagramatic map in Vol. VI of the Proc. Royal 

 Geographical Society, he attempted to show the continuity of the 

 main range between Dras and the Nepal frontier; although correct 

 in the broad outlines, there are many minor deviations to notice in 

 the diagram as given in the map. It is this range to which alone 

 the name Himachal (snow-mountain) or Himalaya ought properly to 

 be given; the "abode of snow," where the sacred spirits of great 

 men dwell with their gods, as the ancient Hindu scriptures tell us. In 

 this range most of the great, snow-covered, perhaps inaccessible peaks 

 are situated, amongst them the highest mountains of the world. But 

 nevertheless this mighty range is not the divide between the plains 

 of India and the high table-lands of Central Asia. Nearly all the 

 more important rivers which rise within the Tibetan area flow 

 through great gorges which traverse the Himalayan ranges ; on the 

 other hand, many of the Himalayan streams, amongst them the entire 

 upper drainage of the Ganges, rise in the mountain valleys between the 

 snowy chain just mentioned and the range which forms the water- 

 parting between Hundes and the Ganges basin, and discharge them- 

 selves through narrow, V-shaped gorges into the lower hill-tracts 

 below. 



It has long been a point of discussion amongst geographers how 

 far the name Himalaya should be extended when applied to the 

 great mountain barrier which closes India along its northern frontier. 

 Originally the names Himalaya (abode of snow), Himachal (snow- 

 mountain) were applied by the ancient Hindu writers to the great 

 snow-covered ranges which form the highest portion of this mountain 

 barrier, and within which the headwaters of the Ganges are found. 

 The name Himalaya has, amongst European geographers, been gener- 

 ally accepted as defining the great barrier of mountains between the 

 gorge of the Indus and the Bramaputra, and to include a belt between 

 the plains of India and the southern margin or edge of the Tibetan 

 1 Proc. R. Geogr. Soc. New Ser., V, 1883, 610 ; ib., VI, 1884, 83—87. 

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