In the year 1820 it first began to be currently reported in Europe that there were not only much higher summits in the Himalaya than in the Cordilleras, but that Webb had seen in the pass of Niti, and Moorcroft in the Thibetian plateau of Daba, and the sacred lakes, fine corn-fields and fertile pasturelands at elevations far exceeding the height of Mont Blanc. This announcement was received in England with great incredulity, and opposed by doubts regarding the influence of the refraction of light. I have shown the unsoundness of such doubts in two printed treatises on the mountains of India, in the _Annales de Chimie et de Physique_. The Tyrolese Jesuit, Father Tiefenthaler, who in 1766 penetrated as far as the provinces of Kemaun and Nepal, had already divined the importance of the Dhawalagiri. We read on his map: “_Montes Albi, qui Indis Dolaghir, nive obsiti_.” Captain Webb always employs the same name. Until the measurements of the Djawahir (30° 22′ north latitude, and 79° 58′ east longitude, 26,902 feet in elevation), and of the Dhawalagiri (28° 40′ north latitude, and 83° 21′ east longitude, 28,072 feet in elevation), were made known in Europe, the Chimborazo, which, according to my trigonometrical measurement, was 21,422 feet in height,[CG] was still everywhere regarded as the loftiest summit on the earth. The Himalaya appeared, therefore, at that time, to be 4323 feet or 6620 feet higher than the Cordilleras, according as the comparison was made with the Djawahir or the Dhawalagiri. Pentland’s South American travels, in the years 1827 and 1838, directed attention to two snow-crowned summits of Upper Peru, east of the lake of Titicaca, which were conjectured to be respectively 3824 and 2578 feet higher than the Chimborazo.[CH] It has been already observed,[CI] that the most recent computations in the measurements of the Sorata and Illimani have shown the error of this hypsometric assertion. The Dhawalagiri, therefore, on whose declivity in the river-valley of Ghandaki, the Salagrana Ammonites, so celebrated in the Brahminical ritual as symbols of the testaceous incarnation of Vishnu, are collected, still indicates a difference of elevation between both continents of more than 6600 feet.