On the southern edge of the great table-land which forms the nucleus of the districts of Asia, the range of the Himalayas rises in parallel lines. The range runs from north-west to south-east, with a breadth of from 200 to 250 miles, and a length of about 1750 miles. It presents the highest elevations on the surface of the earth. Covered with boundless fields of snow and extensive glaciers, the sharp edges and points of the highest ridge rise gleaming into the tropic sky; no sound breaks the deep silence of this solemn Alpine wild. To the south of these mighty white towers, in the second range, is a multitude of summits, separated by rugged ravines. Here also is neither moss nor herb, for this range also rises above the limits of vegetation. Much lower down, a third range, of which the average elevation rises to more than 12,000 feet, displays up to the summits forests of a European kind; in the cool, fresh air the ridges are clothed with birches, pines, and oaks. Beneath this girdle of northern growths, on the heights which gradually sink down from an elevation of 5000 feet, are thick forests of Indian fig-trees of gigantic size. Under the forest there commences in the west a hilly region, in the east a marshy district broken by lakes which the mountain waters leave behind in the depression, and covered with impenetrable thickets, tall jungles, and rank grass--a district oppressive and unhealthy, inhabited by herds of elephants, crocodiles, and large snakes. The mighty wall of the Himalayas decides the nature and life of the extensive land which lies before it to the south in the same way as the peninsula of Italy lies before the European Alps. It protects hill and plain from the raw winds which blow from the north over the table-land of Central Asia; it checks the rain-clouds, the collected moisture of the ocean brought up by the trade winds from the South Sea. These clouds are compelled to pour their water into the plains at the foot of the Himalayas, and change the glow of the sun into coolness, the parched vegetation into fresh green. Owing to their extraordinary elevation, the mountain masses of the Himalayas, in spite of their southern situation, preserve such enormous fields of ice and snow that they are able to discharge into the plains the mightiest rivers in the world. From the central block flow the Indus, the Ganges, and the Brahmaputra, _i.e._ the son of Brahma.