Page:Views in India, chiefly among the Himalaya Mountains.djvu/16

vi There is very little level ground to be found throughout the whole of these districts, which consist entirely of a succession of exceedingly high ridges, crossing each other continually, and presenting a confusion almost wholly indescribable as they branch out from the great elevations beyond. Towards the source, if it may be so called, of the great chain, these mountainous ranges increase in height, the lowest arising abruptly from a long and gentle slope stretching to the plains. These hills are exceedingly steep and narrow at the summit, and they approach each other so closely, that excepting in Nepaul there are very few valleys, the channels that divide them being nothing more than ravines.

We are at present unacquainted with any mountains that exceed the height of the Himalaya; the Andes, long supposed to be the most gigantic in the world, being over-topped by no fewer than twenty of the peaks of these snow-crowned monarchs. Considerable as the estimate taken has been, there is great probability that if the policy of the Ghoorka government would admit of a nearer approach, we should find the heights of some of these peaks to exceed the present computation. The Dhawalagira, or the White Mountain, is supposed to be one of the loftiest; it is situated, according to the common belief, near the source of the Gunduck, and the measurement taken by scientific men employed in the survey, give it a height of 27,000 feet above the level of the sea. Many travellers well qualified to afford a very accurate guess upon the subject, are of opinion that there are peaks in the most northern portion of the Himalaya, which greatly exceed the general calculation. The following table, therefore, the result of a very careful and scientific survey, by Captains Hodson, Webb, and Herbert, may be received with confidence as affording an under, rather than an over estimate of the relative heights of these enormous peaks:—