of only a small degree of elevation, and that over extensive districts.
At so great a distance from any coast, and in those easterly meridians
where the cold of winter is known to exceed that of corresponding
latitudes nearer our own part of the world, a plateau which should be
as high as Madrid or Munich might indeed have very hot summers, but
would hardly have, in 43° and 44° latitude, extremely mild winters with
scarcely any snow. Near the Caspian, 83 English feet below the level
of the Black Sea, at Astrachan in 46° 21′ lat., I saw the cultivation
of the vine greatly favoured by a high degree of summer heat; but the
winter cold is there from -20° to -25° Cent. (-4° to -13° Fahr.) It is
therefore necessary to protect the vines after November, by sinking
them deep in the earth. Plants which live, as we may say, only in the
summer, as the vine, the cotton bush, rice, and melons, may indeed
be cultivated with success between the latitudes of 40° and 44° on
plains of more than 500 toises (3197 English feet) elevation, being
favoured by the powerful radiant heat; but how could the pomegranate
trees of Aksu, and the orange trees of Hami, whose fruit Père Grosier
extolled as distinguished for its goodness, bear the cold of the
long and severe winter which would be the necessary consequence of a
considerable elevation of the land? (Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 48-52,
and 429.) Carl Zimmerman (in the learned Analysis of his “Karte von
Inner Asien,” 1841, S. 99) has made it appear extremely probable that
the Tarim depression, _i. e._ the desert between the mountain chains
of the Thian-schan and the Kuen-lün, where the Steppe river Tarim-gol
empties itself into the Lake of Lop, which used to be described as an
alpine lake, is hardly 1200 (1279 English) feet above the level of the
sea, or only twice the height of Prague. Sir Alexander Burnes also
assigns to that of Bokhara only an elevation of 1190 English feet. It
is earnestly to be desired, that all doubt respecting the elevation of
the plateaux of middle Asia, south of 45° of latitude, should finally
be set at rest by direct barometric measurements, or by determinations
of the boiling point of water made with more care than is usually given
to them. All our calculations respecting the difference between the
limits of perpetual snow, and the maximum elevation of vine cultivation
in different climates, rest at present on too complex and uncertain
elements.
In order to rectify in the smallest space that which was said in the
last edition of the present work, relatively to the great mountain
systems which intersect the interior of Asia, I subjoin the following
general review. We begin with the four parallel chains, which follow
with tolerable regularity an east and west direction, and are connected
with each other at a few detached points by transverse elevations.
Differences of direction indicate, as in the Alps of western Europe, a
difference in the epoch of elevation. After the four parallel chains
(the Altai, the Thian-schan, the Kuen-lün, and the Himalaya), we have
to notice chains following the direction of meridians, viz. the Ural,
the Bolor, the Khingan, and the Chinese chains, which, with the great
bend of the Thibetian and Assamo-Bermese Dzangbo-tschu, run north and
south. The Ural divides a part of Europe but little elevated above
the level of the sea from a part of Asia similarly circumstanced. The
latter was called by Herodotus, (ed. Schweighaüser, T. v. p. 204) and
even as early as Pherecydes of Syros, a Scythian or Siberian Europe,
including all the countries to the north of the Caspian and of the
Iaxartes; in this view it would be a continuation of Europe “prolonged
to the north of Asia.”
1. The great mountain system of the Altai, (the “gold mountains” of
Menander of Byzantium, an historical writer who lived as early as the
7th century, the Altaï-alin of the Moguls, and the Kin-schan of the
Chinese), forms the southern boundary of the great Siberian lowlands;
and running between 50° and 52-1/2° of north latitude, extends from the
rich silver mines of the Snake Mountains, and the confluence of the Uba
and the Irtysh, to the meridian of Lake Baikal. The divisions and names
of the “Great” and the “Little Altai,” taken from an obscure passage of
Abulghasì, are to be altogether avoided. (Asie Centrale, T. i. p. 247.)
The mountain system of the Altai comprehends (_a_) the Altai proper, or
Kolywanski Altai, the whole of which is under the Russian sceptre; it
is west of the transverse opening of the Telezki Lake, which follows
the direction of the meridian; and in ante-historic times probably
formed the eastern shore of the great arm of the sea, by which, in the
direction of the still existing groups of lakes, Aksakal-Barbi and
Sary-Kupa (Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 138), the Aralo-Caspian basin was
connected with the Icy sea:--(_b_) East of the Telezki chain which
follows the direction of the meridian, the Sayani, Tangnu, and Ulangom
or Malakha chains, all running tolerably parallel with each other
and in an east and west direction. The Tangnu, which sinks down and
terminates in the basin of the Selenga, has from very ancient times
formed a boundary between the Turkish race to the south and the Kirghis
(Hakas, identical with Σάκαι) in the north. (Jacob Grimm, Gesch. der
deutschen Sprache, 1848, Th. i. S. 227.) It is the original seat of the
Samoieds or Soyotes, who wandered as far as the Icy Sea, and who were
long regarded in Europe as a nation belonging exclusively to the coasts
of the Polar Sea. The highest snow-clad summits of the Altai of Kolywan
are the Bielucha and the Katunia-Pillars. The height of the latter is
about that of Etna. The Daurian highland, to which the mountain knot
of Kemtei belongs, and on the eastern side of which is the Jablonoi
Chrebet, divides the depressions of the Baikal and the Amur.
2. The mountain system of the Thian-schan, or Celestial Mountains,
the Tengri-tagh of the Turks (Tukiu) and of the kindred race of the
Hiongnu, is eight times as long, in an east and west direction, as the
Pyrenees. Beyond,--_i. e._ west of its intersection with the transverse
or north and south chain of the Bolor and Kosuyrt, the Thian-schan
bears the names of Asferah and Aktagh, is rich in metals, and has open
fissures, which emit hot vapours, luminous at night, and which are used
for obtaining sal-ammoniac. (Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 18-20.) East
of the transverse Bolor and Kosyurt chain, there follow successively
in the Thian-schan,--the Kashgar Pass (Kaschgar-dawan); the Glacier
Pass of Djeparle, which leads to Kutch and Aksu in the Tarim basin;
the volcano of Pe-schan, which sent forth fire and streams of lava
at least as late as the middle of the seventh century; the great
snow-covered massive elevation Bogdo-Oola; the Sol-fatara of Urumsti,
which furnishes sulphur and sal-ammoniac (nao-scha), and is situated
in a coal district; the still active volcano of Turfan (or volcano of
Ho-tscheu or Bischbalik), almost midway between the meridians of Turfan
(Kune-Turpan), and of Pidjan. The volcanic eruptions of the Thian-schan
chain, recorded by Chinese historians, reach as far back as the year
89, A.D., when the Hiongnu of the sources of the Irtysh were pursued
by the Chinese army as far as Kutch and Kharaschar (Klaproth, Tableau
hist. de l’Asie, p. 108). The Chinese General, Teu-hian, surmounted
the Thian-schan, and saw “the Fire Mountains which send out masses of
molten rock that flow for many Li.”
The great distance from the sea of the volcanoes of the interior of
Asia is a remarkable and solitary phenomenon. Abel Rémusat, in a letter
to Cordier (Annales des Mines, T. v. 1820, p. 137), first directed the
attention of geologists to this fact. The distance, for example, in
the case of the volcano of Pe-schan, to the north, or to the Icy Sea
at the mouth of the Obi, is 1528 geographical miles; to the south, or
to the mouths of the Indus and the Ganges, 1512 geographical miles;
to the west, 1360 geographical miles to the Caspian in the Gulf of
Karaboghaz; and to the east, 1020 geographical miles to the shores of
the sea of Aral. The active volcanoes of the New World were previously
supposed to offer the most remarkable instances of such phenomena
at a great distance from the sea; their distance, however, is only
132 geographical miles in the case of the volcano of Popocatepetl
in Mexico, and only 92, 104, and 156 geographical miles in those
of the South American volcanoes Sangai, Tolima, and de la Fragua,
respectively. I exclude from these statements all extinct volcanoes,
and all trachytic mountains which have no permanent connection with
the interior of the earth. (Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 16-55, 69-77,
and 341-356.) East of the volcano of Turfan, and of the fertile Oasis
of Hami rich in fine fruit, the chain of the Thian-schan gives place
to the great elevated tract of Gobi which follows a S.W. and N.E.
direction. This interruption of the mountain chain, caused by the
transverse intersection of the Gobi, continues for more than 9-1/2
degrees of longitude; but beyond it the mountains recommence in the
somewhat more southerly chain of the In-schan, or the Silver Mountains,
running (north of the Pe-tscheli) from west to east almost to the
shores of the Pacific near Pekin, and forming a continuation of the
Thian-schan. As I have viewed the In-schan as an easterly prolongation
(beyond the interruption of the Gobi) of the cleft above which the
Thian-schan stands, so one might possibly view the Caucasus as a
westerly prolongation of the same, beyond the great basin of the Aral
and Caspian Seas or the depression of Turan. The mean parallel of
latitude or axis of elevation of the Thian-schan oscillates between
40-2/3° and 43° N. lat.; that of the Caucasus, according to the map of
the Russian Etat-Major (running rather E.S.E. and W.N.W.), is between
41° and 44° N. lat. (Baron von Meyendorff, in the Bulletin de la
Societé géologique de France, T. ix. 1837-1838, p. 230.) Of the four
parallel chains which traverse Asia from east to west, the Thian-schan
is the only one in which no summits have yet had their elevation above
the sea determined by measurement.
3. The mountain system of the Kuen-lün (Kurkun or Kulkun), if we
include in it the Hindu-Coosh and its western prolongation in the
Persian Elbourz and Demavend, is, next to the American Cordillera of
the Andes, the longest line of elevation on the surface of our planet.
Where the north-and-south chain of Bolor intersects the Kuen-lün at
right angles, the latter takes the name of the Thsung-ling (Onion
Mountains), which is also given to a part of the Bolor at the eastern
angle of intersection. The Kuen-lün, forming the northern boundary
of Thibet, runs very regularly in an east and west direction, in the
latitude of 36°. In the meridian of H’lassa an interruption takes
place from the great mountain knot which surrounds the alpine lake
of Khuku-noor, the Sing-so-hai, or Starry Sea, so celebrated in the
mythical geography of the Chinese. The somewhat more northerly chains
of Nan-schan and Kilian-schan may almost be regarded as an easterly
prolongation of the Thian-schan. They extend to the Chinese wall near
Liang-tscheu. West of the intersection of the Bolor and Kuen-lün (the
Thsung-ling) I think I have been the first to shew (Asie Centrale,
T. i. p. 23, and 118-159; T. ii. p. 431-434 and 465) that the
corresponding direction of the axes of the Kuen-lün and the Hindu-Coosh
(both being east and west, whereas the Himalaya is south-east and
north-west) makes it reasonable to regard the Hindu-Coosh as a
continuation, not of the Himalaya, but of the Kuen-lün. From the
Taurus in Lycia to Kafiristan, through an extent of 45 degrees of
longitude, this chain follows the parallel of Rhodes, or the diaphragm
of Dicearchus. The grand geognostical view of Eratosthenes (Strabo,
Lib. ii. p. 68; Lib. xi. p. 490 and 511; and Lib. xv. p. 689), which
is farther developed by Marinus of Tyre, and Ptolemy, and according to
which “the continuation of the Taurus in Lycia extends across the whole
of Asia to India, in one and the same direction,” appears to have been
partly founded on statements which reached the Persians and Indians
from the Punjaub. “The Brahmins affirm,” says Cosmas Indicopleustes,
in his Christian Topography, (Mountfauçon, Collectio nova Patrum, T.
ii. p. 137) “that a line drawn from Tzinitza (Thinæ) across Persia
and Romania, exactly cuts the middle of the inhabited earth.” It is
deserving of notice that Eratosthenes had so early remarked that this
longest axis of elevation in the Old Continent, in the parallels of
35-1/2° and 36°, points directly through the basin (or depression) of
the Mediterranean to the Pillars of Hercules. (Compare Asie Centrale,
T. i. p. 23 and 122-138; T. ii. p. 430-434, with Kosmos, Bd. ii. S.
222 and 438, p. 188, and note 292, Engl. ed.) The easternmost part
of the Hindu-Coosh is the Paropanisus of the ancients, the Indian
Caucasus of the companions of Alexander. The now generally used term
of Hindu-Coosh, belongs, as may be seen from the Travels of the Arab
Ibn Batuta (English version, p. 97), to a single mountain pass on
which many Indian slaves often perished from cold. The Kuen-lün, like
the Thian-schan, shews igneous outbreaks or eruptions at many hundred
miles from the sea. Flames, visible at a great distance, issue from
a cavity in the Schin-khieu Mountain. (Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 427
and 483, where I have followed the text of Yuen-thong-ki, translated
by my friend Stanislas Julien.) The highest summit measured in the
Hindu-Coosh, north-west of Jellalabad, is 3164 toises above the sea
(20132 English feet); to the west, towards Herat, the chain sinks to
400 toises (2558 English feet), until, north of Teheran, it rises again
to a height of 2295 toises (14675 English feet) in the volcano of
Demavend.
4. The mountain system of the Himalaya. The normal direction of this
system is east and west when followed from 81° to 97° E. long. from
Greenwich, or through more than fifteen degrees of longitude from the
colossal Dhawalagiri (4390 toises, 28071 English feet) to the breaking
through of the long-problematical Dzangbo-tschu river (the Irawaddy,
according to Dalrymple and Klaproth), and to the chains running north
and south which cover the whole of Western China, and in the provinces
of Sse-tschuan, Hu-kuang, and Kuang-si form the great mountain group
of the sources of the Kiang. The next highest culminating point to the
Dhawalagiri, of this east and west part of the Himalaya, is not, as
has been hitherto supposed, the eastern peak of the Schamalari, but
the Kinchinjinga. This mountain is situated in the meridian of Sikhim,
between Bootan and Nepaul, and between the Schamalari (3750? toises,
23980 English feet) and the Dhawalagiri: its height is 4406 toises, or
26438 Parisian, or 28174 English feet. It was first measured accurately
by trigonometrical operations in the present year, and as the account
of this measurement received by me from India says decidedly, “that a
new determination of the Dhawalagiri leaves to the latter the first
rank among all the snow-capped mountains of the Himalaya,” the height
of the Dhawalagiri must necessarily be greater than that of 4390
toises, or 26340 Parisian, 28071 English feet, hitherto ascribed to
it. (Letter of the accomplished botanist of Sir James Ross’s Antarctic
Expedition, Dr. Joseph Hooker, written from Dorjiling, July 25, 1848.)
The turning point in the direction of the axis of the Himalaya range
is not far from the Dhawalagiri, in 79° E. long. from Paris (81° 22′
Greenwich). From thence to the westward the Himalaya no longer runs
east and west, but from SE. to NW., connecting itself, as a great cross
vein, between Mozuffer-abad and Gilgit south of Kafiristan, with a part
of the Hindu-Coosh. Such a bend or change in the direction or strike of
the axis of elevation of the Himalaya (from E-W. to SE-NW.), doubtless
points, as in the western part of our European Alps, to a difference
in the age or epoch of elevation. The course of the Upper Indus, from
the sacred lakes Manasa and Ravana-hrada (at an elevation of 2345
toises, 14995 English feet) in the vicinity of which the great river
rises, to Iskardo and to the plateau of Deo-tsuh, (at an elevation of
2032 toises, 12993 English feet) measured by Vigne, follows in the
Thibetian highlands the same north-westerly direction as the Himalaya.
Here is the summit of the Djawahir, long since well measured and known
to be 4027 toises (25750 English feet) in elevation, and the valley
of Kashmeer, where at an elevation of only 836 toises, (5346 English
feet), the Wulur Lake freezes every winter, and, from the perpetual
calm, no wave ever curls its surface.
Having thus described the four great mountain systems of Asia, which
in their normal geognostic character are chains coinciding with
parallels of latitude, I have next to speak of the series of elevations
coinciding nearly with meridians, (or more precisely, having a
SSE.-NNW. direction), which, from Cape Comorin opposite to the Island
of Ceylon to the Icy Sea, alternate between the meridians of 66° and
77° E. long. from Greenwich. To this system, of which the alternations
remind us of _faults in veins_, belong the Ghauts, the Soliman chain,
the Paralasa, the Bolor, and the Ural. The interruptions of the series
of elevations are so arranged that, beside their alternate position in
respect to longitude, each new chain begins in a degree of latitude to
which the preceding chain had not quite reached. The importance which
the Greeks (although probably not before the second century) attached
to these chains induced Agathodemon and Ptolemy (Tab. vii. and viii.)
to represent to themselves the Bolor, under the name of Imaus, as an
axis of elevation extending as far as 62° N. lat. into the low basin of
the Lower Irtisch and the Obi. (Asie Centrale, T. i. p. 138, 154, and
198; T. ii. p. 367.)
As the perpendicular elevation of mountain summits above the level of
the sea (unimportant as in the eyes of the geologist the circumstance
of the greater or lesser corrugation of the crust of the earth may
be), is still, like all that is difficult of attainment, an object
of popular curiosity, the following historical notice of the gradual
progress of hypsometric knowledge may here find a suitable place.
When I returned to Europe in 1804 after a four years’ absence, not a
single Asiatic snowy summit either in the Himalaya, the Hindu-Coosh,
or the Caucasus, had been measured with any exactness; and I could
not therefore compare my determinations of the height of perpetual
snow in the Cordilleras of Quito, or the mountains of Mexico, with
any corresponding determinations in the East. The important journey
of Turner, Davis, and Saunders, to the highlands of Thibet, does
indeed belong to the year 1783, but Colebrooke justly remarks, that
the elevation given by Turner to the Schamalari (lat. 28° 57′, long.
89° 30′, a little to the north of Tassisudan) rests on foundations
as slight as those of the so-called measurements of the heights seen
from Patna and the Kafiristan by Colonel Crawford and Lieutenant
Macartney. (Compare Turner, in the Asiatic Researches, vol. xii. p.
234, with Elphinstone’s Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, 1815, p. 95,
and Francis Hamilton, Account of Nepal, 1819, p. 92.) The excellent
observations and writings of Webb, Hodgson, Herbert, and the brothers
Gerard, have thrown great and certain light on the elevation of the
colossal summits of the Himalaya; yet, in 1808, the hypsometric
knowledge of this great Indian chain was still so uncertain that Webb
wrote to Colebrooke: “The height of the Himalaya still remains a
problem. I find, indeed, that the summits visible from the high plain
of Rohilcund are 21000 English feet above that plain, but we do not
know the absolute height above the sea.”
It was not until the beginning of the year 1820 that it began to be
reported in Europe, that not only were there in the Himalaya, summits
much higher than those of the Cordilleras, but also that Webb had seen
in the Pass of Niti, and Moorcroft in the Thibetian plateau of Daba
and the Sacred Lakes, fine pastures and flourishing fields of corn,
at altitudes far exceeding the height of Mont Blanc. These accounts
were received in England with much incredulity, and were met by doubts
respecting the influence of refraction. I have shown the groundlessness
of these doubts in two memoirs (Sur les Montagnes de l’Inde), printed
in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique. The Tyrolese jesuit, P.
Tiefenthaler, who in 1766 penetrated into the provinces of Kemaun
and Nepal, had already divined the importance of the Dhawalagiri.
We read on his map, “Montes Albi, qui Indis Dolaghir, nive obsiti.”
Captain Webb always uses the same name. Until the measurements of the
Djawahir (lat. 30° 22′, long. 79° 58′, altitude 4027 toises, or 25750
English feet) and of the Dhawalagiri (lat. 28° 40′, long. 83° 21′,
altitude 4390? toises, 28072 English feet) were made known in Europe,
the Chimborazo (3350 toises, or 21421 English feet), according to my
trigonometric measurement, (Recueil d’Observations astronomiques, T.
i. p. 73) was still everywhere regarded as the highest summit on the
surface of the earth. The Himalaya now appeared, according as the
comparison was made with the Djawahir or the Dhawalagiri, 676 toises
(4323 English feet), or 1040 toises (6650 English feet), higher than
the Chimborazo. Pentland’s South American travels, in the years 1827
and 1838, fixed attention (Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes, 1830,
p. 320 and 323) on two snowy summits of Upper Peru, east of the
Lake of Titicaca, which were supposed to surpass the height of the
Chimborazo respectively by 598 and 403 toises, (3824 and 2577 English
feet.) I have remarked above, pp. 53-54, that the latest calculation
of the measurements of the Sorata and Illimani shews this view to be
incorrect. The Dhawalagiri (on the declivity of which, in the valley of
the Ghandaki, the Salagrana Ammonites, so celebrated among the Brahmins
as symbols of one of the incarnations of Vishnu, are collected)
therefore still shews a difference between the culminating points of
the Old and the New Continents of more than 6200 Parisian, or 6608
English feet.
The question has been raised, whether there may not exist behind the
southernmost more or less perfectly measured chain, other still greater
elevations. Colonel George Lloyd, who in 1840 edited the important
observations of Captain Alexander Gerard and his brother, entertains
an opinion that in the part of the Himalaya which he calls somewhat
vaguely “the Tartaric chain,” (meaning therefore in north Thibet
towards the Kuen-lün, and perhaps in Kailasa of the sacred lakes, or
beyond Leh) there are summits of from 29000 to 30000 English feet,--one
or two thousand feet higher therefore than the Dhawalagiri. (Lloyd
and Gerard, Tour in the Himalaya, 1840, vol. i. p. 143 and 312; Asie
Centrale, T. iii. p. 324.) So long as actual measurements are wanting,
one cannot decide respecting such possibilities; as the indication,
from which the natives of Quito, long before the arrival of Bouguer
and La Condamine, recognised the superior altitude of the Chimborazo
(namely, from the portion of its height above the region of perpetual
snow being greater than in any of the other mountains), might prove
very deceptive in the temperate zone of Thibet, where radiation is
so active in the table-land, and where the lower limit of perpetual
snow does not form a regular line at an equal elevation, as it does in
the tropics. The greatest elevation above the level of the sea ever
attained by human beings on the declivity of the Himalaya, is 3035
toises, or 18210 Parisian, or 19409 English feet, reached by Captain
Gerard, with seven barometers, on the mountain of Tarhigang, a little
to the north-west of Schipke. (Colebrooke, in the Transactions of the
Geological Society, vol. vi. p. 411.) This happens to be exactly the
same height as that reached by myself on the 23rd of June, 1802, and
thirty years later by my friend Boussingault, on the 16th of December,
1831, on the declivity of the Chimborazo. The unattained summit of the
Tarhigang is, however, 197 toises, or 1260 English feet, higher than
that of the Chimborazo.