Page:Narratives of the mission of George Bogle to Tibet.djvu/45

xl shows that the Himálaya culminates in two parallel ranges running through their entire length, which I have called the Southern and Central Himálayan Chains, separated by a series of valleys. This view is in opposition to those very ably stated by Mr. Brian Hodgson, Dr. Thomson, Dr. Hooker, and others, who consider that the Southern Himálaya, with its line of snowy peaks, is not a true chain or cordillera, because it is broken by the defiles through which rivers force their way, whose sources are on what I have called the Central Chain. They consider the Southern Himálaya to be not a chain, but a series of spurs from the Central Chain. It will at once be seen that this is not a question of fact, but of nomenclature, which would scarcely have arisen if the similar facts relating to other great mountain masses, such as the chains or cordilleras of the Andes, had been considered. When this is done it will be seen that a great chain of mountains, with a continuous series of culminating ridges and a continuous slope, is a chain, whether rivers force their way through its gorges or not, and that these phenomena of the Himálaya occur also in the Andes, which are nevertheless properly called cordilleras.

Warren Hastings was the first to notice the striking analogy between the Andes and the Himálaya, after perusing the work