272 OBSERVATIONS ON THE 



seen from a position so elevated, that Chimhorazo itself would look like a 

 mole hill, and the highest summits of the Himalaya cease to appear ma- 

 jestic. Subsequent travellers have been equally deceived by the aspect 

 of the interior, and though aware of their own elevation, erred prodigiously 

 in their conclusions on the height of the country. Seeing the mountains 

 under a less abrupt form, and only capped with snow produced a convic- 

 tion of their depressed altitude, and that the whole surface had a down- 

 ward tendency ; a knowledge of the reverse may be now safely hazarded 

 even upon the rude approximations which have been obtained. A tra- 

 veller in Rupsliu finds himself, for days together, upon a level between 

 fifteen and seventeen thousand feet, which runs in flat slips, or slightly 

 inclined valleys, formed by the intersections of the mountains which 

 are crossed at their depression, between eighteen and nineteen thousand 

 feet ; but this broken land already borders upon Laddk and the Indus, i\ie 

 bed of which under Leh, the capital, has probably an elevation exceeding 

 eleven thousand feet, yet the country all around was very high, and the 

 distant mountains in sight not only uniformly white in a region where 

 the perennial snows rest beyond twenty thousand feet, but this belt was 

 very broad, and the aspect was more that of mountains of snow than 

 snowy mountains, my own elevation being here eighteen thousand feet ; 

 circumstances of themselves arguing vast height and removing at least 

 much of the uncertainty and many of the errors which the consideration 

 of such a subject would involve under the usual elements of the problem.* 



* Barometrical results from their extreme simplicity and facility of observation, have not received 

 due estimation in Geometrical operations, while inaccuracy in the instruments or observers have 

 justly depreciated their value. It will however be found that with the correctness of which they are 

 susceptible, their indications will approximate so closely to Trigonometrical measurements as to 

 leave the question of superiority doubtful. I allude here to those Mathematical operations, which, 

 by their conditions, exclude every source of error arising from refraction or the determination of 

 the base and angles of the triangle : in cases of considerable difference in which the triangulation 

 involves long distances, and in instances where two of the angles can only be observed, barometrical, 

 conclusions deserve the preference, and in almost all are indispensable adjuncts, and afford satisfac- 

 tory verifications, while the most interesting portion of Physical Geography, the lines of level which 



