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S d   HOOKER's GENERAL HIMALAYAN OROGRAPHY.   121

layan regions; this is because its mean elevation is so enormous, that ranges of e of 4 20 000 to 22 0O0 feet appear low and insignificant upon it. The absence of forest 14 and other obstructions to the view, the breadth and flatness of the valleys, and the undulating character of the lower ranges that traverse its surface, give it a corn-

8~z   paratively level appearance, and suggest the term 'maidan' or 'plains' to the Tibetan,

L, ' when comparing his country with the complicated ridges of the deep Sikkim valleys.»

His views of the axis, the watershed, and the line of highest peaks are of interest. The eastern watershed is marked by the heads of the waters flowing north to the Tsangpo and south to the Brahmaputra of Assam and the Ganges and has, as he says, been crossed only by Turner and Bogle, forgetting Manning. He continues : »Eastwards from the sources of the Tsampu, the watershed of the Himalaya seems to follow a very winding course, and to be everywhere to the north of the snowy peaks seen from the plains of India. It is by a line through these snowy peaks that the axis of the Himalaya is represented in all our maps; because they seem from the plains to be situated on an east and west ridge, instead of being placed on subsidiary meridional ridges ... Though, however, our maps draw the axis through the snowy peaks, they also make the rivers to rise beyond the latter,

tit   on the northern slopes as it were, and to flow southwards through gaps in the axis.

S.   Such a feature is only reconcilable with the hypothesis of the chain being double . . .

Donkia mountain is the culminant point of an immensely elevated mass of mountains, of greater mean height than a similarly extensive area around Kinchenjunga. It comprises Chumulari, and many other mountains much above 20 000 feet, though none equalling Kinchenjunga, Junnoo, and Kubra.»

It is worth noting that the same fate overcame the Transhimalaya, not so

,.Å   long after Nain Sing's journey as after that of the Tibet Frontier Mission. The

peaks visible from the Tsangpo valley were believed to belong to one and the same range, which was consequently drawn as an uninterrupted range on Ryder's and Burrard's maps. In the Transhimalaya as in Himalaya the water-parting is situated north of the high peaks. But to join the highest peaks of the southern parts of Transhimalaya and call the result a range would be as if we joined K2 and the other highest peaks of the Kara-korums with Nanda Devi, Daulagiri, Mount Everest

I He gives a general view of the Himalaya in the following words: »These Mountains (the Himalaya) can in the meridian of Sikkim be only defined by the bed of the Yarrow (Tsampo) (say 14 00o feet) on the North, and the plains of India (3 00o feet) on the S. All between is Himalayan mountains. We naturally call the heavily snowed mass the ridge, or axis of the chain — for that is the visible prominent feature from the S. But it does not follow that the snowy portion indicates the true axis, although a few isolated peaks may rise therefrom and top the world; for the snow, being deposited by a southerly wind, only falls on the southernmost elevations, and is prevented from reaching the true axis behind. Were the snow deposited equally on all the Himalaya, we should have the whole land between the parallel of Kinchin-junga and the Yarrow covered with perpetual snow, and then the axis of the chain would clearly show itself far behind Kinchen-junga, and the latter mountain would appear rising from a spur of the same.» Journal Royal Geographical Society, Vol. 20, 1851,

p. 49 et seq.

16-141741 III.