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Show ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 53 true elevation of the Himalaya continued so long uncertain: but now the resources which belong to the cultivation of science have increa ed in India to such a degree, that Captain Gerard, when on the Tarhigang, near the Sutlej, north of Shipke, at an elevation of 19,411 English feet, after breaking three barometers, had still four equally correct ones remaining. (Critical Researches on Philology and Geography, 1824, p. 144.) Fremont, in the expedition which he made in the years 1842-1844 by order of the Government of the United States, found the highest summit of the whole chain of the Rocky Mountains to the north north-west of Spanish, James's, Long's, and Laramie Peaks. This soowy summit, of which he measured the elevation barometrically, belongs to the group of the Wind River Mountains. It bears on the large map, edited by Colonel Abert, Chief of the Topographical Office at Washington, the name of Fremont's Peak, and is situated in 43° 10' lat. and 110° 13' W. long. from Greenwich, almost 5~0 north of Spanish Peak. Its height, by direct measurement, is 12,730 French, or 13,568 English feet. This would make Fremont's Peak 324 toises (or 2072 English feet) higher than the elevation a signed by Long to James's Peak, which, according to its position, appears to be identical with Pike's Peak in the map above referred to. The Wind River Mountains form the "di\·ortia aquarum," or division between the waters flowing towards either ocean. Captain Fremont (in his Official Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the years 1843-44, p. 70), says, " We saw, on one side, countless mountain lakes, and the sources of the Rio Colorado which carries its waters through the Gulf of California to the Pacific; and, on the other side, the deep valley of the Wind River, where are situated the sources of the Yellowstone River, one of the principal branches of the Missouri, which unites with the Mississippi at St. Louis. To the north-west, rise, covered with perpetual snow, the summits called the Trois Tetons, where the true source of the Missouri itself is situated, not tar from that of the head water of the Oregon or Columbia, or the source of that branch of it called Snake River or Lewis Fork." To the astonishment of the adventurous travellers, they found the top of Fremont's Peak visited by bees: 5* |