Himalayan Journals — Volume 2: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.Hooker, Joseph Dalton
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Himalayan Journals — Volume 2: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.
Hooker, Joseph Dalton
Himalaya Mountains -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Himalaya Mountains
The snowy Himalaya was not visible during our first stay at Myrung,
from the 5th to the 10th of July; but on three subsequent occasions,
viz., 27th and 28th of July, 13th to 17th October, and 22nd to 25th
October, we saw these magnificent mountains, and repeatedly took
angular heights and bearings of the principal peaks. The range, as
seen from the Khasia, does not form a continuous line of snowy
mountains, but the loftiest eminences are conspicuously grouped into
masses, whose position is probably between the great rivers which
rise far beyond them and flow through Bhotan. This arrangement
indicates that relation of the rivers to the masses of snow, which I
have dwelt upon in the Appendix; and further tends to prove that the
snowy mountains, seen from the southward, are not on the axis of a
mountain chain, and do not even indicate its position; but that they
are lofty meridional spurs which, projecting southward, catch the
moist vapours, become more deeply snowed, and protect the dry loftier
regions behind.
The most conspicuous group of snows seen from the Khasia bears N.N.E.
from Myrung, and consists of three beautiful mountains with
wide-spreading snowy shoulders. These are distant (reckoning from
west to east) respectively 164, 170, and 172 miles from Myrung, and
subtend angles of + 0 degrees 4 minutes 0 seconds, - 0 degrees 1
minute 30 seconds, and -0 degrees 2 minutes 28 seconds.* [These
angles were taken both at sunrise and sunset, and with an excellent
theodolite, and were repeated after two considerable intervals.
The telescopes were reversed after each observation, and every
precaution used to insure accuracy; nevertheless the mean of one set
of observations of angular height often varied 1 degree from that of
another set. This is probably much due to atmospheric refraction,
whose effect and amount it is impossible to estimate accurately in
such cases. Here the objects are not only viewed through 160 miles of
atmosphere, but through belts from between 6000 to 20,000 feet of
vertical height, varying in humidity and transparency at different
parts of the interval. If we divide this column of atmosphere into
sections parallel to those of latitude, we have first a belt fifteen
miles broad, hanging over the Khasia, 2000 to 4000 feet above the
sea; beyond it, a second belt, seventy miles broad, hangs over the
Assam valley, which is hardly 300 feet above the level of the sea;
and thirdly, the northern part of the column, which reposes on 60 to
100 miles of the Bhotan lower Himalaya: each of these belts has
probably a different refractive power.] From Nunklow (940 feet lower
than Myrung) they appear higher, the western peak rising 14 degrees
35 minutes above the horizon; whilst from Moflong (32 miles further
south, and elevation 6,062 feet) the same is sunk 2 degrees below the
horizon. My computations make this western mountain upwards of 24,000
feet high; but according to Col. Wilcox's angles, taken from the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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