or THE PLUMB-LINE IN INDIA. 
775 
(29° 30' 48" lat ), Kalianpur (24° 7’ 11"), and Damargida (18° 3' 16"). The parts of the 
dia^am left white m the neighbourhood* of the range are the plains; the lightly 
shaded parts are the mountain slopes, with very varied surface, by degrees attaining the 
height of the celebrated plateau from which the Indus and the Brahmaputra take their 
rise and flow towards the Ocean on different sides of India; the darkly shaded parts are 
this plateau or table-land. 
“The loftiest points known on the surface of the earth are to be found along the 
southern border of the Table-land among the mountains of the Himmalayan Slope ; one 
on nnT/?^'? '’T 28,000 feet, while peaks of 
20,000 feet _abound along the entire chain. The plains of India which skirt the foot of 
Its southei-n face for an extent of 1600 miles, nowhere have an elevation exceeding 
1200 feet above the sea, the average being much less; and we have every reason to 
suppose that the northern plateau of Yarkend and Khotan, like the country around 
ukhara, lies at a very small elevation, probably not more than 1000 or 2000 feet above 
the sea while the surface, as we know, descends on the borders of the Caspian to 80 feet 
eow that level (pp. 4, 5). Major Steachet thinks that “none of the numerous 
ranges commonly marked on our maps of Tibet have any special definite existence as 
mountain chams, apart from the general mass of the Table-land, and that this country 
if- “ the intei-val between the two so-called chains 
of the Himmalaya and Kouenlun, but that it is in reality the summit of a great protu- 
berance above the general level of the earth’s surface, of which the supposed Kouenlun 
and Himmalaya are nothing more than the north and south faces, while the other ranges 
aie ut coiiugations of the table-land more or less strongly marked” (pp. 5, 6). The 
Brahmaputra, “maintain a course along the length of the summit 
o e a e and, and receive, as they proceed, the drainage of its entire breadth; with 
e exception, fiist, of an occasional strip along its southern edge, from which the water 
passes off more or less directly to the north through the Himmalaya; and, secondly, of 
some parts chiefly found in the northern half of the Table-land, from which the water has 
no escape, but is collected in lakes in depressions on its very summit. The waters thus 
^cumulated m these two streams are at length discharged by two openings in the 
Himmalaya Slope through the plains of Hindostan into the Indian Ocean. None of the 
ramage of the table-land, so far as we know, passes in the opposite direction through 
he northein slope; and the area that discharges itself southward at points intermediate 
between the debouche of the Indus and Brahmaputra is, with one exception, that of the 
Sutlej compai-atively insignificant. The waters of the northern slope itself exclusively 
flow dorni to the plains of Yarkend; while in like manner those of the southern slope, 
with the drainage of the exceptional area along the southern border of the table-land 
ninnmg off to the south, traverse the Himmalaya more or less directly, and constitute 
such nvers as the Jumna, Ganges Proper, &c., and other main tributaries of the Indus 
Granges, and Brahmaputra” (pp. 32, 33). 
* Down towards B and C the country becomes hilly; but not sufficiently so to affect my results. 
