1866.] Tableau of Sigh Asia. 61 



Feet. 



Eastern Andes of Bolivia, ... 15,900 



Western Andes of Bolivia, ... ... 18,500 



Andes of Quito, ... * ... 15,700 



For the Alps, my brothers obtained : 



Southern slopes, ... ... ... 9,200 



Northern slopes,... ... 8,900 



Extremes (near the Mont Blanc and Monte 



Rosa group), ... ... ... 9,800 



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 (in 1847) proved their existence in the Himalaya. 

 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, 

 however, they used to designate as " hard, frozen snow-beds," and to 

 consider them as local phenomena, analogous to remains of avalanches. 

 On both sides of the Karakorum and the Kunliin, 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 

 i the glaciers in Europe. 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 Karakorum)" boast of no less than thirty-six miles in length, 

 with a breadth of from one to two and a half miles. The Biafo 

 glacier forms, with the glacier on the opposite slope towards Miggair, 

 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, Yol. XVI., part II. p. 794 ; Vol. XVII. part II. p. 203. 



