Western Himalaya and Tibet / A Narrative of a Journey Through the Mountains of Northern India During the Years 1847-8

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Western Himalaya and Tibet, by Thomas Thomson
ISKARDO. From the South.
Pl. I. J. W. del. W. L. Walton, Lithog. Printed by Hullmandel & Walton.
A NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS OF NORTHERN INDIA, DURING THE YEARS 1847-8.
BY THOMAS THOMSON, M.D., F.L.S., ASSISTANT SURGEON BENGAL ARMY.
LONDON: REEVE AND CO., HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
1852.
PRINTED BY JOHN EDWARD TAYLOR, LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS.
On the termination of my journey in Tibet, I submitted to the Indian Government a detailed report of my observations in that country. It was my original intention to request the permission of the Court of Directors to publish this report in the form in which it was drawn up; but after my return to England, this plan was, at the suggestion of friends, abandoned for that now followed.
At the time of my appointment to the Tibet Mission, my attention had not been specially directed to the Himalaya, but I have since had many opportunities of studying that chain of mountains. My first definite impressions of Himalayan geography were received from my fellow-travellers, Major Cunningham and Captain Henry Strachey. The latter gentleman had just completed one of the most adventurous journeys ever made in the Himalaya; and Major Cunningham's knowledge of the geography of Northern India is so accurate and extensive, that the delay in the publication of his map, although caused by the devotion of his leisure time to other branches of research, is a subject of deep regret to all who know its value. More recently I have had the good fortune to travel in the Eastern Himalaya with Dr. Hooker, and it was a source of great gratification to me, when we met, to find that in studying these mountains at opposite extremities of the chain, the results at which we had arrived were almost identical.
My botanical collections, which were very extensive, have as yet been only roughly assorted, and the names of plants given in the present work are chiefly derived from a careful comparison of specimens with the Hookerian Herbarium at Kew,—a collection which, as is well known to Botanists, both from its extent and from the liberality with which it is thrown open to students of that science, occupies in this country the place of a national collection.