SPITI VALLEY, &c. 27 i 



concluded to be upon the verge of nineteen thousand feet, and as the 

 streams from that elevated level still flow by a circuitous course into Spili, 

 (none finding a slope to the Indus) there is the most presumptive proof for 

 the supposition of higher ranges in the area included between that river and 

 the Satlej than has yet been observed in the detached cliffs of the Himdlaya, 

 which seen from spots little elevated above the sea, in sharp towering 

 peaks, impress by their imposing portraiture an idea of greater altitude 

 than that which is recognised in the mountains behind them, where this 

 effect is absorbed in the vast elevation of the soil from which they rise, and 

 the very lofty position of the spectator who views them. The mountains 

 upon the Tartaric frontier derive from the elements of their formation a 

 rounder contour, appearing like gigantic sand heaps. We here behold them 

 as it were planted upon a plain, which is itself more than half their entire 

 height. The stream of the Satlej at Shipke has already risen to nearly ten 

 thousand feet, and at Bekliar, thirty miles farther, it approaches to eleven 

 thousand. At the town of Daha, under Niti pass, and eight days journey 

 from Mansarovara it verges upon fifteen thousand ; limits which, if in insu- 

 lated elevation, would of themselves be considered as very lofty, are here 

 lost in the continuity of the neighbouring surface, and the highest ridges 

 are apparently diminutive, and where the lines of level reach a greater alti- 

 tude the inequalities of the soil become quite insigniticant. In the plains 

 and vallies of Ritpshu I. found myself surrounded by black conical hills 

 of from three to four thousand feet, mere heaps, yet they had a positive 

 height of twenty thousand, the flat expanse at their base being here 

 sixteen thousand. Lake Chmnorcnl, the greatest depression of the soil was 

 still fifteen thousand feet above the sea, while Lake Mansarovara, from 

 conclusions grounded upon barometrical observations made in the course of 

 the Salhj, appears to be at least seventeen thousand. It is not surprising 

 then that the country of tiie Oondcs, or Jlim-di's, seemed to MooRCRorx to 

 be less lofty than the Ilimdlniin, ami thai oven Kiilas, so conspicuous an 

 object of reverence and ^superstition, clu itcd no mark of admiration \vlicn 



