HIMALAYA MOUNTAINS... x266 



or more precifely determined. This we are enabled to do in the very 

 inftance moft to be defired, that of Mont-blanc heretofore .confidered 

 to be the loftieft mountain of the old continent. Its altitude as feert 

 from Pregny, a nation half a league from Geneva, near the lake, exhibits 

 an angle of 3 14', accordingtoan obfervation by DeLuc;* Tlw-diftancc 

 isftatedby him in round numbers 227000-' French feet ; but appears 

 from Sir G. Shuckburgh's feries of triangles f to be over-rated ; the 

 diftanceof Geneva^ a little more remote, being no' more- than 225098; 

 Ewglyh feet. Calculating- from this fide, and the angle obfcrved by 

 De Luc, with an allowance of T ' T th of the arc for refraction, the height 

 is found 1 37 1 3 feet above ' Pfrgry, or 75222 feet above the level of the 

 fea. De Luc himfelf computed it from the fame obfervation, different- 

 ly employed in a manner which' is little affected by uncertainty; in the 

 refraction or the dii.tance,. though fubjecl to other error, at 239 1- 

 French toifes equal to '■« 5.5:8 ; En- U/h feet: and Sir George Shuckburgh, 

 by a trigonometrical meafur.^rnent in which he ufesfrom one nation a 

 fide of a triangle 206^79 fe.tj and from another one of 142362 feet, and 

 corrects the obferved angles by an allowance for refraction equal to T V th 

 of the contained arc, n,ak s the elevation of Mont-blanc 1441 1 and 

 *4453» or, on a mean of the two, 14432 feet above the lake of Geneva,, 

 and 15662 above the fea, 



f 1 



These inftances may authorize an inference, that, in fimilar mea- 

 f-urements of Dhawalagiii, Dhaibun, and other mountains of the Himalaya, 

 from (lations fome as near, others twice or thrice as diftant, the uncer- 

 tainty re fpecting the accuracy of the re fait is not fo much greater as 

 to render that refult vague and dubious. 



# M '.'ifirations dc l' ntmoVhcrff, & ~,6%. 



+ PhiloftpFi. Trans, vol, 6j. The diftarke is not there flatcd, but u caCly olcalatcd from the «ji£le»anil 

 (Jiftanvcs exhibited. 



