| 1878. ] Geography and Travels. 635 
FLUVIAL INTERSECTIONS OF Mountain Rances.—In an article 
upon the Himalayan System, included in the Proceedings of the 
Berlin Geographical Society, Herr Von Richthofen remarks (as - 
translated in the July Geographical Magazine): In the history of 
orography three styles may be distinguished. As hydrography 
generally precedes topography, so water-partings come to be 
hypothetically regarded as mountain ranges; those between the 
, principal. rivers being considered as ranges of the first degree, and 
those between minor streams as ranges of lower degree. By the 
knowledge of the elevations and depressions of a country we 
arrive at the second stage and find that the mountain ranges do 
not always coincide with the water-partings. Some of the ranges 
are found to be intersected by rivers and the most general features 
of the structure become apparent. A third stage is reached when 
we have obtained from the geological composition not only a 
features. The transition from the first to the second stage can ` 
be seen most distinctly in those mountain systems which have 
only in our own time become ieee as, for instance, in the one 
of the Tian-Shan and the Pam r Mountains, where in the un- 
explored districts, the water- artes system still regulates the 
drawing of our maps; whilst, in all districts which have been 
surveyed more accurately, range after range appears distinctly 
with frequent fluvial intersections. 
continuous function of water- -parting is not the necessary 
mark of a mountain range. In the case of the Himalayas the 
incipe adopted long ago from a purely geographical point of 
y geologists, Jr rarely admitted by geographers, is triumph- 
auth established, z. e., that mountain ranges are to be considered 
independently of o uiton and intersections by river valleys 
and that the latter are only to be regarded as solutions of con- 
tinuity of a secondary importance. 
GEOGRAPHICAL News.—The U. S. Coast Survey steamer Blake 
returned about the 1st of July, from dredging operations in the 
Gulf of Mexico. Capt. Patterson of the Coast Survey, states 
that the extensive and accurate soundings of the Gulf, taken by 
the improved scientific methods on this voyage, do not tend to 
confirm the belief, long held, that the equatorial current, after 
rushing from the Caribbean Sea through the channel formed by 
the West Indian islands and the northward projection of Yucatan 
makes the whole tortuous circle of the Gulf close by the shores 
of Central America, Mexico and the southern coast of the United 
States, before emerging into the Atlantic, between the point of 
Florida and the Bahamas. The observations tend rather to prove 
that the force of the incoming equatorial stream extends itself in 
the direction against the mass of the Gulf long before it reaches" 
Texas coast and then turns directly towards and re-issues into _ 3 
