General considerations on the contrasts shown by the spaces included between the central chain (the Rocky Mountains) and the diverging chains on the east and west (the Alleghanies and the Sierra Nevada of California); hypsometric characters of the low eastern space, which is only from 400 to 600 French, or 426 to 639 English feet above the level of the sea, and of the arid uninhabited plain 5000 or 6000 (5330 to 6400 English) feet above the same level, called the Great Basin. Sources of the Mississipi in the Lake of Istaca according to Nicollet’s highly meritorious researches. Buffalo country; Gomara’s assertion of buffaloes having been formerly tamed in the northern part of Mexico [50]–[55]
Retrospective view of the chain of the Andes from the Rocks of Diego Ramirez to Behring’s Strait. Long circulated errors respecting the heights of mountains in the eastern chain of the Andes of Bolivia, especially the Sorata and the Illimani. Four summits of the western chain of Bolivia, which, according to Pentland’s latest determinations, are higher than the Chimborazo, but are not equal in height to the still active volcano of Acongagua measured by Fitz-Roy [55]–[58]
The African mountains of Harudsch-el-Abiad. Oases [58]–[60]
West winds on the coast of the Sahara. Accumulation of sea-weed; position of the great bank of Fucus from the time of Scylax of Caryanda to that of Columbus, and to the present day [60]–[67]
Tibbos and Tuaricks. The camel and its distribution [67]–[71]
Mountain systems of the interior of Asia between Northern Siberia and India. Erroneous belief in the existence of a single great elevated plain called “Plateau de la Tartarie” [71]–[75]
Chinese literature a rich source of orographic knowledge. Series of elevations of different highlands. Desert of Gobi. Probable mean height of Thibet [75]–[85]
Review of the mountain systems of the interior of Asia. Chains running in the direction of the meridian; the Ural, which separates the low part of Europe from the low part of Asia, or divides into two portions the Scythian Europe of Pherecydes of Syros and of Herodotus; Bolor; Khingan and the Chinese chains, which, near the great bend in the direction of the Thibetian and Assamo-Burmese river Dzangbo-tschu, run north and south. The elevations which, between 66° and 77° E. long. from Greenwich, follow the direction of meridians from Cape Comorin to the Icy Sea, alternate like veins or dikes in which there are faults or displacements; thus the Ghauts, the Soliman Chain, the Paralasa, the Bolor, and the Ural, succeed each other from south to north: the Bolor gave occasion among the ancients to the idea of the Imaus, which Agathodæmon supposed to be prolonged to the north into the low basin of the lower Irtysch. Parallel chains running east and west; the Altai; Thian-schan, with its active volcanoes at a distance of 1528 geographical miles from the Icy Sea at the mouth of the Obi, and of 1512 geographical miles from the Indian Sea at the mouth of the Ganges; the Kuen-lün, recognised by Eratosthenes, Marinus of Tyre, Ptolemy, and Cosmas Indicopleustes, as the longest axis of elevation in the Old World, runs between 35½° and 36° of latitude in the direction of the diaphragm of Dicearchus. Himalaya. The Kuen-lün, considered as an axis of elevation, may be traced from the wall of China near Lung-tscheu through the somewhat more northerly chains of Nan-schan and Kilian-schan, through the mountain knot near the Lake called the “Starry Sea,” through the Hindu-Coosh (the Parapanisus and Indian Caucasus of the ancients), and through the chain of Demawend and the Persian Elbourz, to Taurus in Lycia. Near the intersection of the Kuen-lün and the Bolor the correspondence of the direction of the axes of elevation (east and west in the Kuen-lün and the Hindu-Coosh, whereas that of the Himalaya is south-east and north-west) shows that the Hindu-Coosh is a continuation of the Kuen-lün, and not of the Himalaya. The point where the direction of the Himalaya changes to south-east and north-west from having been east and west, is about the 79th degree of east longitude from Paris (81° 22′ Greenwich). Next to the Dhawalagiri, it is not, as has been hitherto supposed, the Jawahir which is the highest summit of the Himalaya; that rank belonging, according to the most recent intelligence received from Dr. Joseph Hooker, to a mountain situated between Boutan and Nepaul in the meridian of Sikkim, the Kinchinjinga: the western summit of this mountain, which has been measured by Colonel Waugh, director of the trigonometrical survey of India, is 28178 feet, and its eastern summit 27826 feet high, according to the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Nov. 1848:—The mountain which is now supposed to be higher than the Dhawalagiri is figured on the frontispiece of the magnificent work of Joseph Hooker entitled “The Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya, 1849.”—Determination of the lower limits of the snow-line on the northern and southern declivities of the Himalaya; its height being on an average 3400 to 4600 French, or 3620 to 4900 English feet higher on the northern face. New data on the subject from Hodgson. Without this remarkable distribution of temperature in the upper strata of the atmosphere, the mountain plains of Western Thibet would be uninhabitable to the millions of human beings who now dwell there [85]–[101]
The Hiong-nu, regarded by Deguignes and Johannes Müller as a tribe of Huns, appear rather to have been one of the widely scattered tribes of the Turks of the Altai and Tang-nu mountains. The Huns, whose name was known to Dionysius Perigetes, and who are noticed by Ptolemy as Chuns (whence the later appellation of Chunigard given to a country!), are a Finnish race of the Ural mountains [101]–[102]
Figures of the sun and of animals, and other signs carved on rocks in the Sierra Parime, as well as in North America, have often been supposed to be writing [102]–[104]