OCR Text |
Show 456 SUMMARY OF THE CONTENTS. Hindu-Coosh (the Parapani~us 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 Kuenlan and the Bolor, the correspondence of the direction of the axes of elevation (east and west in the Kuen-Jan 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-lan, and not of the Himalaya. The point where the direction of the Himalaya changes to the south-east and north-west from having been east and west, is about the 79th degree of east longitude from Paris (81° 221 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 28, 17 8 feet, and its eastern summit 27,826 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 83-94 The Hiong-nu, regarded by Deguignes and Johannes Muller 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 94-95 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 95-96 Description of the cold mountain elevations between 11,000 and 13,000 (or 11,720 and 13,850 English) feet, which are distinguished by the appellation of Paramos; character of their vegetation . 96-98 Notices of the two groups of mountains (Pacaraima Mountains, and the Sierra de Chiquitos) which separate the three plains of the Lower Orinoco, the Amazons, and the Rio de la Plata . . . 98 |