HIMALAYAS (him-a-Wyaz), THE, or the HIMALAYA MOUNTAINS, an extensive mountain range of Asia, and the loftiest in the world, bounding Hin dustan on the N. and separating it from the tableland of Tibet, which stands 10, 900 feet above the sea. This chain is ?ontinuous W. with the Hindu Kush and Behor-Tagh, and E. with the Chinese hibleland of Yun-nan; but the term Himalaya is usually restricted by geographers to that portion of the range lying between the passages of the Indus and Brahmaputra; the former being in lat. 35° N., and Ion. 75° E., and the latter in 28° 15' N., and Ion. 96° E. The direction of the range, as thus de fined, is S. E. from the Indus to the Gunduk, and thence E. to its termination. Its entire length is 1,900 miles; its aver age breadth is 90 miles, and the surface which it covers is estimated at 160,000 square miles. The average height of the Himalayas has been estimated at 15,700 feet. The principal peaks are: Mount Everest, 29,140 feet; Kunchinjinga, in Sikkim, 28,178 feet; W. peak of the same, 27,826 feet; Dhawalagiri, in Nepal, 28,862 feet; Dhawahir, in Kumaon, 25, 749 feet. The passes over the main
ridge amount to about 20, a few of which only are practicable for horses, sheep being principally used as beasts of bur den over the steep acclivities.
The only rock sufficiently extensive to characterize the geological formation of this great chain is gneiss. The chief minerals hereto found are gold-dust, cop per, lead, iron, antimony, manganese, sulphur, alum, and rock-salt.
The mammalia of the Himalayas are chiefly confined to ruminating animals, a few varieties only of the horse and cat tribes being found in these regions. The wild horse is seen on the N. side of the range; but the principal tenants of the hilly slopes are the yak, much used as a beast of burden by the Tartars, the ghurls (Capra mgagrus), of which the Cashmere and Tibet goats are varieties, the Nepal stag, the black deer, the chirn, or one-horned antelope, the goral, and the nylghau. Among the birds are the lammergeyer, the common cuckoo, the Impeyan pheasant, the red-le•gged crow, and the wood-pigeon.