The wonders of the world : $b a complete museum, descriptive and pictorial, of the wonderful phenomena and results of nature, science and artAbbott, John Loraine
Science
The wonders of the world : $b a complete museum, descriptive and pictorial, of the wonderful phenomena and results of nature, science and art
Abbott, John Loraine
Curiosities and wonders
rock itself, can not fairly be estimated at less than from seventy to
eighty miles.
“The great snowy belt, although its loftiest crest is broken into
numberless cliffs and ravines, nevertheless presents a barrier perfectly
impracticable, except in those places where hollows that become the beds
of rivers have in some degree intersected it, and facilitated approach
to its more remote recesses, or courageous and attentive perseverance
has here and there, discovered a dangerous and difficult path, by which
a possibility exists of penetrating across the range. Few rivers hold
their course wholly through it: indeed, in the upper part the Sutlej
alone has been traced beyond this rocky barrier; and there is a path
along its stream, from different parts of which roads diverge, that lead
in various directions through the mountain. No reasonable doubt can now
exist of the very long and extraordinary course which this river takes.
“Captain Webb of the Bengal establishment, was at one time employed on a
survey of a province of Kumaoon. On the twenty-first day of June, his
camp was eleven thousand, six hundred and eighty feet above Calcutta.
The surface was covered with very rich vegetation as high as the knee;
there were very extensive beds of strawberries in full flower; and
plenty of currant-bushes in blossom all around, in a clear spot of rich
black mold soil, surrounded by a noble forest of pine, oak and
rhododendron. On the twenty-second of June he reached the top of
Pilgoenta-Churhaee, (or ascent,) twelve thousand, six hundred and
forty-two feet above Calcutta. He was prevented from distinguishing very
distant objects by a dense fog; but there was not the smallest patch of
snow near him; and the surface, a fat black mold through which the rock
peeped, was covered with strawberry plants, (not yet in flower,)
butter-cups, dandelions, and a profusion of other flowers. The shoulders
of the hill above him, about four hundred and fifty feet more elevated,
were covered with the same to the top; and above five hundred feet below
was a forest of pine, rhododendron and birch. There was some snow seen
below in deep hollows, but it dissolves in the course of the season.
These facts led Captain Webb to infer, that the inferior limit of
perpetual congelation on the Himalaya mountains is beyond thirteen
thousand, five hundred feet, at least, above the level of Calcutta: and
that the level of the table-land of Tartary, immediately bordering on
their range, is very far elevated beyond eight thousand feet, the hight
at which it has been estimated.
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