Mountain Scenery.—Much has been written about the impressiveness of Himalayan scenery. It is but lately, however, that any adequate conception of the magnitude and majesty of the most stupendous of the mountain groups which mass themselves about the upper tributaries and reaches of the Indus has been presented to us in the works of Sir F. Younghusband, Sir W. M. Conway, H. C. B. Tanner and D. Freshfield. It is not in comparison with the picturesque beauty of European Alpine scenery that the Himalaya appeals to the imagination, for amongst the hills of the outer Himalaya—the hills which are known to the majority of European residents and visitors—there is often a striking absence of those varied incidents and sharp contrasts which are essential to picturesqueness in mountain landscape. Too often the brown, barren, sun-scorched ridges are obscured in the yellow dust haze which drifts upwards from the plains; too often the whole perspective of hill and vale is blotted out in the grey mists that sweep in soft, resistless columns against these southern slopes, to be condensed and precipitated in ceaseless, monotonous rainfall. Few Europeans really see the Himalaya; fewer still are capable of translating their impressions into language which is neither exaggerated nor inadequate.
Some idea of the magnitude of Himalayan mountain construction—a magnitude which the eye totally fails to appreciate—may, however, be gathered from the following table of comparison of the absolute height of some peaks above sea-level with the actual amount of their slopes exposed to view:—
Relative Extent of Snow Slopes Visible.
| Name of Mountain. | Place of Observation. | Height above sea. | Amount of Slope exposed. |
| Everest | Dewanganj | 29,002 | 8,000 |
| Everest | Sandakphu | ” | 12,000 |
| K2 or Godwin-Austen | Between Gilgit and Gor, 16,000 ft. | 28,250 | |
| Pk. XIII. or Makalu | Purnea, 200 ft | 27,800 | 8,000 |
| Pk. XIII. or Makalu | Sandakphu, 12,000 ft. | ” | 9,000 |
| Nanga Parbat | Gor, 16,000 ft. | 26,656 | 23,000 |
| Tirach Mir | Between Gilgit and Chitral, 8000 ft. | 25,400 | 17-18,000 |
| Rakapushi | Chaprot (Gilgit), 13,000 ft. | 25,560 | 18,000 |
| Kinchinjunga | Darjeeling, 7000 ft. | 28,146 | 16,000 |
| Mont Blanc | Above Chamonix, 7000 ft. | 15,781 | 11,500 |
It will be observed from this table that it is not often that a greater slope of snow-covered mountain side is observable in the Himalaya than that which is afforded by the familiar view of Mont Blanc from Chamonix.
(T. H. H.*)
Authorities.—Drew, Jammu and Kashmir (London, 1875); G. W. Leitner, Dardistan (1887); J. Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindu Kush (Calcutta, 1880); H. H. Godwin-Austen, “Mountain Systems of the Himalaya,” vols. v. and vi. Proc. R. G. S. (1883-1884); C. Ujfalvy, Aus dem westlichen Himalaya (Leipzig, 1884); H. C. B. Tanner, “Our Present Knowledge of the Himalaya,” vol. xiii. Proc. R. G. S. (1891); R. D. Oldham, “The Evolution of Indian Geography,” vol. iii. Jour. R. G. S.; W. Lawrence, Kashmir (Oxford, 1895); Sir W. M. Conway, Climbing and Exploring in the Karakoram (London, 1898); F. Bullock Workman, In the Ice World of Himalaya (1900); F. B. and W. H. Workman, Ice-bound Heights of the Mustagh (1908); D. W. Freshfield, Round Kangchenjunga (1903).
For geology see R. Lydekker, “The Geology of Káshmir,” &c., Mem. Geol. Surv. India, vol. xxii. (1883); C. S. Middlemiss, “Physical Geology of the Sub-Himálaya of Gahrwal and Kumaon,” ibid., vol. xxiv. pt. 2 (1890); C. L. Griesbach, Geology of the Central Himálayas, vol. xxiii. (1891); R. D. Oldham, Manual of the Geology of India, chap. xviii. (2nd ed., 1893). Descriptions of the fossils, with some notes on stratigraphical questions, will be found in several of the volumes of the Palaeontologia Indica, published by the Geological Survey of India, Calcutta.
HIMERA, a city on the north coast of Sicily, on a hill above the east bank of the Himeras Septentrionalis. It was founded in 648 B.C. by the Chalcidian inhabitants of Zancle, in company with many Syracusan exiles. Early in the 5th century the tyrant Terillas, son-in-law of Anaxilas of Rhegium and Zancle, appealed to the Carthaginians, who came to his assistance, but were utterly defeated by Gelon of Syracuse in 480 B.C.—on the same day, it is said, as the battle of Salamis. Thrasydaeus, son of Theron of Agrigentum, seems to have ruled the city oppressively, but an appeal made to Hiero of Syracuse, Gelon’s brother, was betrayed by him to Theron; the latter massacred all his enemies and in the following year resettled the town. In 415 it refused to admit the Athenian fleet and remained an ally of Syracuse. In 408 the Carthaginian invading army under Hannibal, after capturing Selinus, invested and took Himera and razed the city to the ground, founding a new town close to the hot springs (Thermae Himeraeae), 8 m. to the west. The only relic of the ancient town now visible above ground is a small portion (four columns, lower diameter 7 ft.) of a Doric temple, the date of which (whether before or after 480 B.C.) is uncertain.