Beginning their operations at the point where the Dauli river falls into the Alakananda, they followed up the former to the very base of the Himalaya, and, after eighteen days of excessive fatigue, reach ed a gorge in the mountains, named the Nitee Ghati, or pass of Nitee. At some distance below it was a small village of the same name, whose great height was inferred by the hill, terminating the valley on which it stood, being tipped with snow on the 5th June, and also by a quick breathing with which Mr Moorcroft was seized, and which obliged him to stop every four or five steps; he complained also of a sense of fulness in the head, accompanied by gid diness. In ascending the ghaut, the difficulty of breathing increased, with great oppression about the heart ; and, when on the point of falling asleep, a sense of suffocation was felt, and sighing became fre quent and distressing. The same symptoms of op pression and debility were experienced by M. Sans sure on the Alps, which he ascribed rather to the presence of carbonic acid gas, than to the tenuity of the atmosphere. We conceive, however, that the great height alone is sufficient to account for these symptoms.
At Nitee the travellers were informed that the passage of the mountains was never attempted be fore Sancrant, or the entrance of the sun into Can cer ; they waited, therefore, till the 24th June. For the last twenty days, the thermometer at sun rise was generally about at noon 72°, and from that to 80°, the nights clear and serene ; the birch trees and rose bushes were just then bursting into leaf, the furze coming into blossom, and the grain apperring above the ground.
The length of the Nitee pass is about two miles ; it leads to an elevated plain to which there is little or no descent, called by the natives Undes or Ondes, which signifies " the country of wood." The name of Thibet was not known to them, and Captain Webb thinks it may have been derived from Teiba, which signifies, in the Ghorka language, " high peaked mountains." The mountains crossing this plain, or rising in detached masses out of its surface, were covered with snow. The first, and indeed the only continued ridge seen by Moorcroft, was at the distance of about forty miles from the Himalaya, and nearly parallel to it, closing, however, gradually upon it to the eastward ; but, at the distance of above eighty miles, they united not far from the two lakes of Rawan-hrad and Manonsarowar, which were separated from each other by a slip of land about four or five miles in width. The ridge thus uniting with the Himalaya is named Caillas, which is rather a generic term for any high mountain, than peculiar to a single one, and is with the Hindoos what Olympus was with the Greeks.
The intermediate plain consists of a rugged stony surface, bristled in some places with rude shapeless rocks, and, in others, scooped out into broad and deep ravines, presenting, on every side, an extend ed dreary waste, without a tree or shrub to enliven the prospect, the only vegetation being confined to some low furze bushes, a woolly plant like everlast ing, tufts of silky grass, and a species of moss, hibiting a sickly green, among patches of snow, and splashes of snow water. The only enlivening ob jects that appeared to Mr Moorcroft and his party were " two very beautiful poplar trees, in which were many goldfinches." These were on the banks of a considerable stream, flowing to the westward, down the middle of the plain, in the bed of which was a species of tamarisk, then in blossom, and reaching to the height of eight feet.
This river was then conjectured, and has 'since If been ascertained, to be the Sutlij, or Satudra. It rises in the lake Rawan-hrad, to the eastward of any of the sources of the Ganges, and having col- Himabb• lected in its western course the various streams the northern face of the Himalaya, and the south ern face of the Caillas, finds a passage through the former chain, near Mount Kantel, on the eastern side of Cashmere ; and, on entering the plain of Hin- - dostan, becomes the easternmost of the Penjab, or Five Rivers, the boundary of our Indian possessions to the westward ; and, in its course to the south ward, joins the Indus. This source and direction of the Setlij can now be no longer doubted, as its course, which was ascertained to lie through the great range of mountains by Mr Baillie Frazer, has since been traced back through the ravine of the Himalaya, and for a considerable distance to the eastward. On this elevated plain is situated the town of Deba.
Mr Moorcroft and his party having passed the first table-land, crossed the Caillas range, on the Source of other side of which the rugged plain extended be-the yond the reach of sight. The numerous streams from the northern face of Caillas, uniting in the vale of Ghertope, form a river of considerable magnitude, which, from information, pursues a north-westerly course for some hundred miles, passes by Latak, and then crossing the Hindoo-coosh (which may be considered as a prolongation of the Himalaya) to the westward of Cashmere, assumes the name of In dus or Scinde ; of which great river it may be con sidered as one of the main branches, the other com ing from the northward out of the mountains called the Moos-tag.
Mr Moorcroft did not ascertain what river or Supposed rivers flowed out of the lake Manansorawar, and seems Source of to think that it has no outlet. This is very impro- the Bulma' bable, as its water was fresh, and there seems to be little doubt but the Sanpoo, or the main branch of the Bramapootra, issues from its eastern extremity. In that case, this lake may be considered as about the highest part of the general level of the great plateau of Tartary.
Thus, by the exertions of recent travellers, the Geography geography of the great mountainous buttress which of the Mow' supports the elevated regions of Thibet and Re is now pretty well decided ; but all is still conjecture,' as far as regards an extensive range of country to the northward, the north-westward, and north-east ward of the Caillas range of mountains.
Neither the ancients, to whom the Himalaya Absolute mountains were well known, nor the Hindeos, Height of whom they have always been the cherished objects of veneration, nor our countrymen, who, from the knms plains of Bengal, had so often gazed at their snow capped summits from a distance of 150 miles, ven tured to form a conjecture even of their absolute height above the level of those plains. Mr Cole brooke, in his Note to Captain Raper's Narrative, observes, that, without supposing the Himalaya to exceed the Andes, there is still room to argue, that an extensive range of mountains, which rears high above the line of perpetual snow, in an almost tropical latitude, an uninterrupted chain of lofty peaks, is neither surpassed nor rivalled by any other chain of mountains but the Cordilleras of the Andes." Shortly after this, however, he thinks the observa tions of Lieutenant Webb "authorise an universal