[29]Manasarawar and Rawan Rhad.
[30]Moorcroft's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 47-50.
[31]Journal of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, 1842, No. 126. Captain Herbert, who had travelled a great deal in the Himalaya, was the first to point out the impropriety of regarding these mountains as a single chain parallel to the plains of India. Jacquemont also arrived at the same conclusion, as will be seen from the following extract from his journal:—"Le langage de la géographie descriptive est théorique; c'est une grande faute si les théories qu'il rappelle sans cesse sont dénuées de fondement. Ainsi l'on dit que le Setludje coupe la chaîne centrale de l'Himalaya, que sa vallée est creusée au travers, etc., etc., et l'on donne à penser par là que cette chaîne auparavant etait continue et que c'est par un effort des eaux que s'y est faite cette large trouée, comme si les montagnes avaient dû se former primitivement avec une continuité non interrompue" (vol. ii. p. 201); and again (at p. 269), "Le Setludje coule donc non au nord de l'Himalaya, mais entre deux chaînes à peu près également élevées."
[32]Captain R. Strachey, in his paper on the snow-level, proposes to call the more western part of the Cis-Sutlej Himalaya the Busehir range, a name which, though exceedingly appropriate to the portion to which he applies it, is not adapted for extension to the more eastern part.
[33]Travels in Kashmir, etc., vol. ii. p. 382.
[34]Travels, vol. i. p. 361.
[35]That Tibet is not an extensive plain, according to the usual idea, has already been pointed out by Humboldt (Asie Centrale, vol. i. p. 12). Chinese geographers, according to him, describe all parts of Tibet as more or less mountainous; the eastern portion of West Tibet (Gnari) as least so. Captain H. Strachey, in his account of his visit to lake Manasarawar, says expressly that "the surface of Gnari is for the most part extremely mountainous." In the lower Tibetan course of the Sutlej, the recent discoveries of Captain Strachey show that an alluvial table-land of considerable extent exists, intersected by deep ravines.
[36]See some observations of the thermometer recorded by Mr. Vigne, at Iskardo, Khapalu, etc.
[37]Asie Centrale, vol. iii. p. 22.
[38]In the Map No. 65 of the Survey of the Western Himalaya, by Captains Hodgson and Herbert, the glacier of Gangutri is marked "Great snow-bed or glacier;" but whether this indication of a knowledge of the true nature of the mass is due to the surveyors or to the maker of the map in England, I have no means at present of ascertaining.