Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 05.djvu/35

LEFT HIMALAYAS 19 HINDENBURG fort was attacked Nov. 5, 1861, by a Union fleet under Commodore Dupont, and captured, after a smart action, in fleet," under Commodore Tatnall, took part. The National loss was reported at 8 killed and 23 wounded, that of the Confederates, 10 killed and 10 wounded. HIMALAYAS (him-a-la'yaz), 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
 * vhich a Confederate flotilla, or "mosquito
 * ontinuous W. with the Hindu Kush and

Behor-Tagh, and E. with the Chinese iableland 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 avei'- 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, 26,862 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 tegagrus), 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 nylprhau. Among the birds are the lammergeyer, the common cuckoo, the Trapeyan pheasant, the red-lpgged crow, and the wood-pigeon. HIMANTOPUS (-man'to-pus), a ge- nus of grallatorial birds, family Re- curvirostridce, distinguished by the great length of their legs; from which circum- stance they are sometimes called stilt birds. One species is found in this coun- try, the black-necked stilt, H. nigricollis (Vieill.). This bird, called in Europe the Long-legged Plover, is 14 inches long. As its conformation would lead us to con- clude, it is a bird whose most congenial habitat is morasses, and the low, flat shores of lakes, rivers, and seas. HIMEJI, a city of Japan, the capital of the province of Harima. It is in the "' southern part of the island of Hondo. The chief industries are the manufacture of cotton and leather. Pop. about 40,000. HIND, JOHN RUSSELL, an English, astronomer; born in Nottingham, Eng- ' land. May 12, 1823. In 1840 he obtained a situation in the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, where he remained till June, 1844. He was then sent as one of the commission appointed to determine the exact longitude of Valentia, and on his return became the observer in Mr. Bishop's Observatory, Regent's Park, London. Here he calculated the orbits and declination of more than 70 planets and comets, noted a number of new mov- able stars, and between 1847 and 1854 discovered 10 minor planets (see Plane- toids). In 1851 he obtained from the Academy of Sciences at Paris their La- lande medal; in 1852 the Astronomical Society of London's gold medal, and a pension of $1,000 a year from the Brit- ish government; in 1853 he undertook the editing of the "Nautical Almanac." He wrote : "Astronomical Vocabulary" (1852); "The Comets" (1852); "The Solar System" (1852); "Descriptive Treatise on Comets" (1857). In 1880 he was president of the Royal Astronomi- cal Society. He died in Twickenham, England, Dec. 22, 1895. HINDENBURG, PAUL VON BEN- ECKENDORF UND VON, a German field marshal and Chief of the German General Staff from 1916 to 1919. Born in 1847, he first won distinction in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Later he rose to the rank of General and for a time was a member of the General Staff. When the war of 1914 broke out he was residing as a retired army officer at Hanover. The ill-success of the Ger- mans in the fighting against the Rus- sians in East Prussia caused the Kaiser to call Hindenburg from his retirement and to give him command of the German arms in East Prussia, a region which had