The heights of Tartary, bulging out beyond the general surface of the globe, have been considered, indeed, by many as the cradle of the human species, or still more emphatically, and perhaps more properly, as _the foundery of the human race_. This opinion did not arise solely from the vast multitudes of people corresponding with the Tartar character, that are spread over every part of the eastern world, and who in countless swarms once overran all Europe, but was grounded on a supposition, that the whole surface of the globe, or the greater part of it, has at one time been submerged in water, and that Tartary was the last to be covered, and the first that was uncovered; and the place from whence, of course, a new set of creatures were forged as in a workshop, from some remnant of the old stock, to be the germs of future nations. Almost every part of the earth, indeed, affords the most unequivocal indications that such has actually been the case, not only in the several marine productions that have been discovered in high mountains, at a distance from any sea, and equally deep under the surface of the earth; but more especially in the formation of the mountains themselves, the very highest of which, except those of granite, consisting frequently of tabular masses piled on each other in such regular and horizontal strata, that their shape and appearance cannot be otherwise accounted for, or explained by any known principle in nature, except by supposing them at one time to have existed in a state of fluidity, by the agency of fire or of water, a point which seems to be not quite decided between the Volcanists and the Neptunists. The heights of Tartary are unquestionably the highest land in the _old_ world. In America they may, perhaps, be exceeded. _Gerbillon_, who was a tolerable good mathematician and furnished with instruments, assures us, that the mountain _Pe-tcha_, very inferior to many in Tartary, is nine Chinese _lees_, or about fifteen thousand feet, above the level of the plains of China. This mountain, as well as all the others in the same country, is composed of sand stone, and rests upon plains of sand, mixed with rock salt and saltpetre. The _Sha-moo_, or immense desert of sand, which stretches along the north-west frontier of China and divides it from western Tartary, is not less elevated than the _Pe-tcha_, and is said to resemble the bed of the ocean. Some of the mountains starting out of this _sea of sand_, which its name implies, cannot be less than twenty thousand feet above the level of the eastern ocean.