ON THE CHAINS OF MOUNTAINS AND VOLCANOS OF CENTRAL ASIA.

by baron a. von humboldt.

In the journey I made, during the summer of 1829, in Northern Asia, beyond the Ob, I passed nearly seven weeks on the frontiers of Chinese Zungaria, between the forts of Oust-Kamenogorsk and Bouktaminsk, and the Chinese advanced station named Khoni-maïlakhou, to the north of lake Zaïsang; on the line of the Cossacks of the steppe of the Kirghiz, and on the coasts of the Caspian Sea.

At the important emporia of Semipolatinsk, Petropaulovski, Troïtzkaïa, Orenburg, and Astrakan, I endeavoured to obtain from the Tatars, who travel about so much, — and by Tatars I understand, as the Russians do, not Mongols, but men of Turk family, Bokhars, and Tashkandis, — information respecting the tracts of Inner Asia adjoining their country.

Travels to Toorfan, Aksu, Khoten, Yarkand, and Cashmer are very rare; but Cashgar, the country between the Altaï and the northern slope of the Celestial Mountains (Tëen-shan), where Choogulchak, Korgos, and Gulja, or Kura, are situated, the Khanat of Kokand, Bokhara, Tashkand, and Shersaves, to the south of Samarkand, are frequently visited.

At Orenburg, where caravans of some thousand camels arrive annually, and where the exchange is crowded with different nations, M. de Gens, a well-informed man, has been collecting, with care, for the last twenty years, a mass of very important materials relating to the geography of Inner Asia.

Amongst the numerous itineraries, which M. de Gens communicated to me, I found the following remark: “in proceeding from Semipolatinsk to Yarkand, when we reached lake Ala-kul, or Ala-dinghis, a little to the north-east of the great lake Balkashi (the Palcatinor of D’Anville), which receives the waters of the Ele, we saw a very lofty mountain, which formerly emitted fire.

Even at the present day, this mountain, which raises itself in the lake like a little island, occasions violent tempests, which annoy the caravans; wherefore a few sheep are sacrificed, in passing, to this ancient volcano.”

A frontier station established by the Chinese in 1767.

This town has ramparts of earth; the magistrates and inspectors of the frontier reside here.

The garrison consists of 1,000 Chinese soldiers and 1,800 Manchoos or Mongols.

The Chinese are permanently placed there; they constitute a military colony, and are obliged to cultivate the earth for their subsistence.

The Manchoos and Mongols are sent from Ele, and are relleved every year.—Klaproth.

This fact, taken from the mouth of a Tatar traveller, at the beginning of the present century, excited in me the more interest, since it recalled to my mind the burning mountains of Central Asia, which we have become acquainted with from the learned researches of M. M.

Rémusat and Klaproth in Chinese works, and the position of which, at so great a distance from the sea, has caused so much astonishment.

Shortly before my departure from St. Petersburgh, I received, by the great politeness of M. de Klosterman, the following information, which he had procured from Bokhars and Tashkandis:—“ the distance from Semipolatinsk to Gulja is twenty-five days: the route is by mounts Alashan and Kondegatay (in the steppe of the Kirghiz of the middle horde), the borders of lake Savande-kul, the Tarbagatay mountains in Zungaria and the river Emyl: when it is traversed, the road unites to that which leads from Choogulchak to the province of Ele.

From the banks of the Emyl to lake Ala-kul, the distance is sixty versts.

The Tatars estimate the distance of this lake from Semipolatinsk at 455 versts.

It is on the right, and its extent is 100 versts from east to west.

In the midst of this lake rises a very high mountain, called Aral-toobeh.

From thence to the Chinese station between the small lake Yanalashe-kul and the river Baratara, on the banks of which Kalmuks dwell, it is reckoned fifty-five versts.”

The name of this river is Boro-tala-gol; it flows, not from east to west, but from west to east; and it empties itself not into the Alak-tugul-noor, but into the Khaltar-usike-noor.—Klaproth.

Comparing the itinerary of Orenburg with that of Semipolatinsk, there remained no doubt that the mountain which, according to the tradition of the natives, consequently in historical times, emitted fire, was the conical isle of Araltoobeh.

As the most important point in these statements concerned the geographical position of the isle, and its relative situation in respect to the volcanos discovered by Messrs. Rémusat and Klaproth, in very ancient Chinese books, as then existing in the interior of Asia, to the north and south of mount Tëen-shan, it will not be out of place to insert here some details respecting the geography of this region.

The central and interior portion of Asia, which forms neither an immense cluster of mountains nor a continued table-land, is crossed from east to west by four grand systems of mountains, which have manifestly influenced the movements of the population; these are, the Altaï, which is terminated to the west by the mountains of the Kirghiz; the Tëen-shan, the Kwan-lun, and the Himalaya chain.

Between the Altaï and the Tëen-shan, are placed Zungaria and the basin of the Ele; between the Tëen-shan and the Kwan-lun, Little or rather Upper Bucharia, or Cashgar, Yarkand, Khoten, the great desert of Gobi (or Cha-mo), Toorfan, Khamil (Hami), and Tangout, that is, the northern Tangout of the Chinese, which must not be confounded with Tibet, or Se-fan; lastly, between the Kwan-lun and the Himalaya, Eastern and Western Tibet, where H’lassa and Ladak are situated.

1. The system of the Altaï encompasses the sources of the Irtish, and of the Yenisseï or Kem; to the east, it takes the name of Tangnu; that of the Sayanian mountains between lakes Kossogol and Baikal; farther on, that of the lofty Kentaï and the mountains of Dauria; lastly, to the north-east, it joins the Yablonnoy-khrebet, the Khingkhan and the Aldan mountains, which stretch along the sea of Okhotsk.

The mean latitude of its course from east to west is between 50° and 51° 30′.

We shall soon have satisfactory notions respecting the geography of the north-eastern part of this system, between the Baikal, Yakutsk, and Okotsk, for which the world will be indebted to Dr. Erdman, who has recently traversed those parts.

The Altaï, properly so called, scarcely occupies seven degrees of longitude; but we give to the northernmost portion of the mountains encompassing the vast mass of high land of Inner Asia, and occupying the space comprised between the 48th and 51st parallels, the name of the System of the Altaï, because simple names are more easily impressed upon the memory, and because that of Altaï is best known to Europeans from the great metallic wealth of these mountains, which now annually yield 70,000 marks of silver and 1,900 marks of gold.

The Altaï, in Turkish, in Mongol, Altaï-in-oola, “gold mountain,” is not a chain of mountains, forming the limit of a country, like the Himalaya, which bounds the table-land of Tibet, and which consequently lowers itself abruptly only on the side of India, which is lower than the other country.

The plains adjoining lake Zaïsang, and especially the steppes near lake Balkashi, are certainly not more than 300 toises (1968 English feet) above the level of the sea.

I avoid intentionally, in this paper, conformably to the statements I collected on the spot, employing the term Lesser Altaï, if this term is applied to the vast mass of mountains situated between the course of the Narym, lake Teletsky, the Bia, Serpent Mountain, and the Irtish above Oustkamenogorsk, consequently the territory of Russian Siberia, between the 79th and 86th meridians east of Paris, and between the parallels of 49° 30′ and 52° 30′.

This Little Altaï is probably, owing to its extent and elevation, much more considerable than the Great Altaï, whose position and existence, as a chain of snowy mountains, are, perhaps, equally problematical.

Arrowsmith, and several modern geographers, who have followed the model he has arbitrarily adopted, give the name of Great Altaï to an imaginary continuation of the Tëen-shan which is carried to the eastward of Khamil (Hami) and Barkoul (Chin-se-foo), a Manchoo town, and runs to the north-east, towards the eastern sources of the Yenisseï and Mount Tangnu.

The direction of the line of separation of the waters, between the affluents of the Orkhon and those of the Aral-noor, lake of the steppe, and the unfortunate practice of marking by high chains of mountains where systems of streams separate, have occasioned this error. If it be desired to retain on our maps the name of Great Altaï, it should be given to the succession of lofty mountains ranged in a course directly opposite (parallel to the chain of the Khangai), or from the north-west to the south-east, between the right bank of the Upper Irtish, and the Yeke- Aral-noor, or Lake of the Great Isle, near Gobdo-Khoto.

Mount Khanggay-ula is to the north of the source of the Orkhon.

Its summits are lofty and considerable.

This chain is a branching off of the Altai, which comes from the north-west: it extends to the eastward to the rivers Orkhon and Tula with their affluents, and becomes the Kenteh of the Khinggan.

A branch of this chain separates to the west and runs to the north under the name of the Kuku-daban; it encompasses the Upper Selengga and all its affluents, which take their origin in it, and then runs a distance of 1,000 le into the Russian territory.

The Orkhon, the Tamir, and their affluents have likewise their sources in this chain, which is probably the same which the Chinese distinguish by the name of Yang-jin-shan.—Klaproth.

There, consequently, to the south of the Narym and of the Bukhtorma, which bounds what is called the Little-Russian Altaï, was the primitive abode of the Turk tribes; the place where Dizabul, their grand khan, towards the close of the sixth century, received an ambassador from the emperor of Constantinople.

This gold-mountain of the Turks, the Kin-shan of the Chinese, a name with the same signification, bore heretofore also those of Ek-tag, and Ektel, both of which probably have an analogous meaning.

It is said that more to the south, under the 46th parallel, and almost in the meridian of Pijan and Toorfan, a lofty peak is still called in Mongol Altaïnniro, “summit of the Altaï.”

If some degrees farther to the south, this Great Altaï unites itself to the Naiman-ula mountains, we there find a transverse ridge which, running from the north-west to the south-east, joins the Russian Altaï to the Tëenshan, northward of Barkoul and Hami.

This is not the place to develope how the system of north-western direction so general in our hemisphere is traced in the beds of the rocks, in the line of the Alps of Alghin, of the lofty steppe of the Chuya, of the chain of the Jyiktu, which is the culminating point of the Russian Altaï, and in the hollows of the narrow valleys, where flow the Chulyshman, the Chuya, the Katunia, and the Upper Charysh; lastly, in the whole course of the Irtish from Krasnoyarskoi to Tobolsk.

The Chinese (in their imperial geography of China), in tracing the direction of the Great Altai from the north-west to the south-east, makes it almost re-unite itself to the Tëen-shan, which corresponds exactly with what M. de Humboldt states.—Klaproth.

Between the meridians of Oust-Kamenogorsk and of Semipolatinsk, the system of the Altaï mountains extends from east to west, beneath the parallels of 59 and 50, by a chain of hills and low mountains, for 160 geographical leagues, as far as the steppe of the Kirghiz.

This range, though of very small importance in respect to size and elevation, is highly interesting to geognosy.

There does not exist a continued chain of Kirghiz mountains, which, as the maps represent, under the names of Alghidin-tsano or Alghidin-chamo, unites the Ural and the Altaï.

Some isolated hills of 500 or 600 feet high, groups of small mountains which, like the Semi-tau near Semipolatinsk, rise abruptly to the height of 1,000 or 1,200 feet above the plains, deceive the traveller who is not accustomed to measure the inequality of the soil; but it is not less remarkable that these clusters of hills and small mountains have been raised across a furrow which forms this line of division of the waters between the affluents of the Saras, or to the south in the steppe, and those of the Irtish to the north: a fissure which follows uniformly, as far as the meridian of Sverinagolovskoy, the same direction for sixteen degrees of longitude.

In the line of division of the waters between the Altaï and the Ural, between the 49th and 50th parallels, is observable an effort of nature, a kind of attempt of subterranean energy, to force up a chain of mountains; and this fact recalls powerfully the similar appearances I remarked in the new continent.

But the non-continued range of low mountains and hills of crystallized rocks, by which the system of the Altaï is prolonged to the west, does not reach the southern extremity of the Ural, a chain which, like that of the Andes, presents a long wall running from north to south, with metallic mines on its eastern side: it terminates abruptly under the meridian of Sverinogovloskoy, where geographers are accustomed to place the Alghinic mountains, the name of which is entirely unknown by the Kirghiz of Troitsk and of Orenburg.

II. System of the Tëen-shan.—Their mean latitude is 42°.

Their culminating point is perhaps the mass of mountain remarkable by its three peaks, covered with eternal snows, and celebrated under the name of Bokhda-ula, or “Holy Mountain,” in the Mongol-Calmuc tongue; which has caused Pallas to give to the whole chain the denomination of Bogdo.

From the Bokhda-ula, the Tëen-shan runs easterly towards Barkoul, where, to the north of Hami, it sinks abruptly, and spreads itself to the level of the high desert called the Great Gobi, or Shamo, which extends south-west and north-east, from Kwa-chow, a town of China, to the sources of the Argun.

Mount Nomkhun, to the north-west of the Sogok and the Sobo, little lakes of the steppe, denotes, perhaps, by its position, a slight swell, an angle in the desert; for after an interruption of at least ten degrees of longitude, there appears, a little more to the south than the Tëen-shan, in my opinion, as a continuation of this system, at the great bend of the Hwang-ho, or Yellow River, the snowy chain of the Gajar, or Yn-shan, which runs likewise from west to east, under the parallels of 41 and 42, consequently to the north of the country of Ordos.

Let us now return to the neighbourhood of Toorfan and the Bokhda-ula, and follow the western prolongation of the second system of mountains; we shall perceive that it extends between Gulja (Ele), the place whither the Chinese government exiles criminals, and Kucha; then between Temoortu, a large lake, the name of which signifies “ferruginous water,” and Aksu, to the north of Cashgar, and runs towards Samarkand.

The country comprised between the first and second systems of mountains, or between the Altaï and the Tëen-shan, is closed on the east, beyond the meridian of Peking, by the Khingkhan-ula, a mountainous crest which runs S.S.W. and N.N.E.; but to the west, it is entirely open on the side of the Chwei, the Sarasu and the Lower Sihoon.

In this part there is no transverse ridge, provided, at least, we do not regard as such the series of elevations which extend, north and south, to the west of lake Zaisang, across the Targabatay, as far as the northeastern extremity of the Ala-tau, between lakes Balkash and Alak-tugulnoor, and then beyond the course of the Ele, to the eastward of the Temoortu-nor (between lat. 44° and 49°), and which present the appearance of a wall occasionally interrupted on the side of the Kirghiz steppe.

This is a name which has occasioned much confusion.

The Kirghis, particularly those of the grand horde, give the title of Ala-tagh (Alatau, “speckled mountains”) to a series of elevations extending from west to east, under the parallels of 43° 30′ to 45°, from the Upper Sihoon (Syr-daria or Jaxartes), near Tonkat, towards lakes Balkashi and Temoortu.

The eastern portion of the Ala-tau rises considerably at the great sinuosity made by the Sihoon to the north-west, and connects with the Kara-tau (“Black Mountain”) at Taras or Turkestan.

The natives likewise give the name of Ala-tau to the mountains to the south of the Tarbagatay between lakes Ala-kul, Balkashi, and Temoortu. Is it from these denominations that geographers have been in the habit of calling the whole second system of mountains that of Tëen-shan, Alak or Ala-tau?

The Oolug-tagh, or “Great Mountain,” named on some maps Oulug-tag Oolu-tau, and Ooluk-tagh, must not be confounded with the Ala-tau or Ala-taghi.

It is quite otherwise with the portion of Central Asia, which is bounded by the second and third systems of mountains, the Himalaya and Kwan-lun.

In fact, it is closed to the west in a very evident manner by a transverse ridge, which is prolonged from south to north, under the name of Bolor or Beloortagh.

This chain separates Little from Great Bucharia, and from Cashgar, Badakshan, and the Upper Jihoon or Amoodaria.

Its southern portion, which connects with the system of the Kwan-lun mountains, forms, according to the denomination used by the Chinese, a part of the Tsung-ling. To the north, it joins the chain which passes to the north-west of Cashgar, and bears the name of the defile of Cashgar (Cashgar-divan, or davan), according to the narrative of Nasaroff, who, in 1813, travelled as far as Kokand.

Between Kokand, Dervazeh, and Hissa, consequently between the still unknown sources of the Sihoon and Amoo-daria, the Tëen-shan rises previous to sinking again in the Khanat of Bokhara, and presents a group of lofty mountains, several summits of which, such as the Takt-i-Suleyman, the crest called Terek and others, are covered with snow even in summer.

Farther to the east, on the road which runs from the western bank of lake Temoortu to Cashgar, the Tëen-shan does not appear to me to attain so great an elevation; at least no mention is made of snow in the itinerary from Semipolatinsk to Cashgar.

The road passes to the eastward of lake Balkashi, and to the westward of lake Yssi-kul or Temoortu, and traverses the Narun or Narym, an affluent of the Sihoon.

At 105 versts to the south of the Narun, it goes over Mount Rovatt, which is pretty high, and about fifteen versts wide; it has a large cavern, and is situated between the At-bash, a small river, and the little lake of Chater-kul.

This is the culminating point previous to arriving at the Chinese post placed to the south of the Aksu, a small river of the steppe, the village of Artush and Cashgar.

This city, built on the banks of the Aratumen, contains 15,000 houses and 80,000 inhabitants, but is yet smaller than Samarkand.

The Cashgardavan does not appear to form a continuous wall, but to offer an open passage at several points. M.

Gens expressed to me his surprise that none of the numerous itineraries of Bokharians which he has collected, make mention of a lofty chain of mountains between Kokand and Cashgar.

The great snowy mountains seem not to re-appear till east of the meridian of Aksu, for these same itineraries mention Jeparleh, a glacier covered with perpetual snow, on the Kura road, on the banks of the Ele at Aksu, nearly half-way, between the warm springs of Arashan to the north of Kanjeilao, a Chinese station, and the advanced post of Tamga-tash.

According to M. Klaproth, this transversal ridge is named in Ouigoor Boolyt-tagh, “Cloudy Mountain,” on account of the extraordinary rains which fall uninterruptedly in this latitude, during three months.

West of this transverse ridge of Beloor, is the station of Pamir, nearly under the parallel of Cashgar.

Marco Polo has named, after this station, a table-land of which modern geographers have made sometimes a chain of mountains, sometimes a province situated farther to the south.

This district is still interesting to the naturalist, on account of the celebrated Venetian traveller having first observed there a fact, which has so often occurred in my experience, at considerable elevations, in the New World, namely, that it is extremely difficult to light and to keep fire in there.

The terms davan, in Oriental-Turki, dabahn, in Mongol, and dabagan, in Manchoo, denote not a mountain, but a pass in a mountain; Cashgar-davan, therefore, signifies only the pass across the mountains to Cashgar.—Klaproth.

This is the Moosar-tag, or glacier between Ele and Kucha.

The ice with which it is sheeted gives it the appearance of a mass of silver.

A road, called Mussar-dabahn, cut through these glaciers, leads from the S. W. to the N. or, to, speak more accurately, from Little Bucharia to Ele.

The following is a description of this mountain by a modern Chinese geographer: “to the north is the post-station of Gakhtsa-karkai, and to the south that of Tamga-tash, or Terma Khada; they are distant from each other 120 le.

On proceeding to the south, after quitting the former, the view extends over a vast space covered with snow, which, in winter, is very deep.

In summer, on the top of the ice, snow and marshy places are found.

Men and cattle follow the winding paths at the side of the mountain.

Whoever is so imprudent as to venture upon this sea of snow is irrecoverably lost.

After traversing upwards of twenty le, you reach the glacier, where neither sand, trees, nor grass can be seen: the most terrifying objects are the gigantic rocks formed into one by masses heaped upon one another.

When the eye dwells upon the intervals which separate these masses of ice, a gloomy chasm appears, into which the light never penetrates.

The sound of the water rushing beneath the ice resembles the report of thunder.

Carcasses of camels and horses are scattered here and there.

In order to facilitate the passage, steps have been cut in the ice, to ascend and descend, but they are so slippery that they are extremely dangerous.

Too frequently travellers find their grave in these precipices.

Men and cattle walk in file, trembling with alarm, in these inhospitable tracts.

If night surprises the traveller, he must seek shelter under a large stone; if the night happen to be calm, very pleasing sounds are heard, like those of several instruments combined: it is the echo which repeats the cracking noise produced by the breaking ice.

The road, which is pursued the day before, is not always that which it is convenient to follow the next day.

At a distance, to the west, a mountain, which has been hitherto inaccessible, displays its scarped and icy summits.

The halting-place of Tamga-tash is eighty le from this place.

A river, called Moossur Gol, rushes with frightful impetuosity from the edges of the ice, flows to the south-east, and joins the Erghew, which falls into lake Lob.

Four days’ journey to the south of Tamga-tash, is an arid plain, which does not produce the smallest plant.

At eighty or ninety le further off, gigantic rocks still recur.

The commandant of Ushi sends every year one of his officers with oblations to this glacier.

The formula of the prayer recited on this occasion is transmitted from Peking by the Tribunal of Rites.

Ice is found along the whole crest of the Tëen-shan, if it is traversed lengthwise; but, on the contrary, if it is crossed from north to south, that is in its width, ice is found only in a space of a few le.

Every morning, ten men are employed, in the pass of Mussar-tag, in cutting steps for ascending and descending; in the afternoon, the sun has either melted them or rendered them extremely slippery.

Sometimes the ice gives way under the feet of the travellers, and they are ingulphed, without a hope of ever seeing day-light again.

The Mohamedans of Little Bucharia sacrifice a ram previous to traversing these mountains.

Snow falls there throughout the year: it never rains.—Klaproth.

The western prolongation of the Tëen-shan or Mooz-tag, as the editors of the Memoirs of Sultan Baber call it by pre-eminence, deserves a particular notice.

At the point where the Beloor-tag joins the right angle of the Mooz-tag, or traverses as a lode or vein this great system, the latter continues its course without interruption from east to west, under the denomination of Asferah-tag, to the south of the Sihon, towards Khojand and Urateppeh, in Ferghana.

This chain of Asferah, which is covered with perpetual snow, and is improperly called the chain of Pamer, separates the sources of the Sihon (Jaxartes) from those of the Amoo (Oxus); it turns to the south-west, nearly in the meridian of Khojand, and in this direction is called, as far as near Samarkand, Ak-tag (“White or Snowy Mountain”), or Al-botom.

Farther to the west, on the smiling and fertile banks of the Kohik, commences the great dip or depression of land, comprehending Great Bucharia, the country of Maveralnahar, which is so low, and where the highly-cultivated soil and the wealth of the towns attract periodically the invasions of the people of Iran, Candahar, and Upper Mongolia; but beyond the Caspian Sea, nearly in the same latitude, and in the same direction as the Tëen-shan, appears the Caucasus, with its porphyritic and trachytic rocks.

One is inclined, therefore, to regard it as a continuation of the furrow, in the form of a lode, on which the Tëen-shan rises in the east, just as, to the west of the great cluster of the mountains of Azerbaijan and Armenia, is observable, in Taurus, a continuation of the action of the fissure of the Himalaya and the Hindu Coosh. It is thus that, in a geognostic sense, the disjointed members of the mountains of Western Asia, as Mr. Ritter calls them, connect themselves with the forms of the land in the east.

III.

The System of the Kwan-lun, or Koolkun, or Tartash-davan, enters Khoten (Elechi), where Hindu civilization and the worship of Buddha penetrated 500 years before it reached Tibet and Ladak, between the cluster of mountains of Kookoo-noor and Eastern Tibet, and the country called Kachi.

The position of Khoten is very incorrectly laid down in all the maps.

Its latitude, according to the astronomical observations of the Missionaries Felix d’Arocha, Espinha, and Hallerstein, is 37° 0′; the longitude 35° 52′ W. of Peking.

This longitude determines the mean direction of the Kwan-lun.

This system of mountains commences westward of the Tsung-ling (“Onion or Blue Mountains”), upon which M. Abel Rémusat has diffused so much light in his learned History of Khoten. This system connects itself, as already observed, with the transverse chain of Bolor; and, according to the Chinese books, forms the southern portion of it.

This quarter of the globe, between Little Tibet and Badakshan, abounding in rubies, lazulite, and turquoise, is very little known; and, according to recent accounts, the table-land of Khorasan, which runs towards Herat, and bounds the Hindu-Kho or Hindu- Coosh, to the north, appears to be a continuation of the system of the Kwanlun to the west, rather than a prolongation of the Himalaya, as commonly supposed.

From the Tsung-ling, the Kwan-lun or Koolkun runs from west to east, towards the sources of the Hwang-ho (Yellow River), and penetrates, with its snowy peaks, into the Chinese province of Shen-se.

Nearly in the meridian of these sources, rises the great cluster of mountains of lake Kookoo-noor, a cluster which supports itself, on the north, against the snowy chain of the Nan-shan, or Ki-lian-shan, extending also from west to east.

Between the Nan-shan and the Tëen-shan, on the side of Hami, the mountains of Tangout bound the edge of the high desert of Gobi or Shamo, which stretches from south-west to north-east.

The latitude of the middle portion of the Kwan-lun is about 35° 30′.

IV. System of the Himalaya.—This separates the valleys of Cashmer (Serinagur) and Nepal from Butan and Tibet; to the west, it stretches, by Jevahir, to 4,026 toises (26,420 feet); to the east, by Dhavalaghiri, to 4,390 (28,809 feet) of actual height above the level of the sea; it runs generally in a direction from N.W. to S.E., and consequently is not parallel with the Kwan-lun; it approaches it so nearly, in the meridian of Attock and Jellalabad, that between Cabul, Cashmer, Ladak, and Badakshan, the Himalaya seems to form only a single mass of mountains with the Hindu-Kho and the Tsung-ling.

In like manner, the space between the Himalaya and the Kwan-lun is more shut up with secondary chains and isolated masses of mountains, than the table-lands between the first, second, and third systems of mountains.

Consequently, Tibet and Kachi cannot properly be compared, in respect to their geognostic construction, with the elevated longitudinal valleys, situated between the chain of the eastern and western Andes, for example, with the table-land which encloses the lake of Titicaca, a correct observer of which (Mr. Pentland) found that its elevation above the sea was 1,986 toises (13,033 feet).

Nevertheless, it must not be represented that the height of the table-land between the Kwanlun and the Himalaya, as well as in all the rest of Central Asia, is equal throughout.

The mildness of the winters, and the cultivation of the vine, in the gardens of H’lassa, in the parallel of 29° 40′,—facts ascertained by the accounts published by M.

Klaproth and the Archimandrite Hyacinth,—proclaim the existence of deep valleys and circular hollows.

Two considerable rivers, the Indus and the Zzambo (Sampoo), denote a depression in the table-land of Tibet, to the north-west and south-east, the axis of which is found nearly in the meridian of the gigantic Javahir, the two sacred lakes of Manassoravara and Ravana Hrada, and Mount Caïlasa, or Caïlas, in Chinese O-new-ta, and in Tibetan Gang-dis-ri.

From this nucleus springs the chain of Kara-korum-padisha, which runs to the north-west, consequently to the north of Ladak, towards the Tsung-ling; and the snowy chains of Hor (Khor) and Zzang, which run to the east.

That of Hor, at its north-western extremity, connects itself with the Kwan-lun; its course, from the eastern side, is towards the Tangri-noor (“Lake of Heaven”).

The Zzang, farther to the south than the chain of Hor, bounds the long valley of the Zzangbo, and runs from west to east, towards the Nëen-tsin-tangla-gangri, a very lofty summit which, between H’lassa and lake Tangri-noor (improperly called Terkiri), terminates at Mount Nom-shun-ubashi.

Between the meridians of Ghorka, Katmandu, and H’lassa, the Himalaya sends out to the north, towards the right bank, or the southern border of the valley, of the Zzang-bo, several branches covered with perpetual snow.

The highest is Yarla-shamboy-gangri, the name of which, in Tibetan, signifies “the snowy mountain in the country of the self-existing deity.”

This peak is to the westward of lake Yamruk-yumdzo, which our maps call Palteh, and which resembles a ring, being almost filled by an island.

In the Andes, I found that the mean height of the longitudinal valley between the Eastern and Western Cordilleras, from the cluster of mountains of Los Robles, near Popayan, to that of Pasco, as well as those in 2° 20′ N. lat. to 10° 30′ S. lat., was about 1,500 toises (9,843 feet).

The table-land, or rather longitudinal valley, of Tiahuanaco, along the Lake of Titicaca, the primitive seat of Peruvian civilization, is more elevated than the Peak of Teneriffe.

However, according to my experience, it cannot be asserted generally that the absolute height to which the soil of the longitudinal valleys appears to have been raised by subterranean force, augments with the absolute height of the neighbouring chains.

In like manner, the elevation of isolated chains above the vallies is very various, showing that at the foot of the chain the raised plain is elevated at the same time, or has preserved its ancient level.

The cultivation of plants, whose vegetable life is almost limited to the duration of summer, and which, despoiled of leaves, remain buried during winter, may be accounted for by the influence which vast table-lands exert upon the radiation of heat; but it is not the same with the slightest rigour of winters, when we refer to elevations of 1,800 to 2,000 toises (11,812 to 13,125 feet) at six degrees to the north of the equinoctial zone.

The researches of M.

Klaproth have proved that this river, which is entirely separated from the system of the Brahmaputra, is identical with the Irrawaddy of the Burmese empire.

There can be no doubt that Palteh is derived from Bhaldi, the Tibetan name of a town a little to the north, which has been corrupted by the Chinese into Peïti or Peti.—Klaproth.

If, availing ourselves of the Chinese writings which M. Klaproth has collected, we follow the system of the Himalaya towards the east, beyond the English territories in Hindustan, we perceive that it bounds Assam to the north, contains the sources of the Brahmaputra, passes through the northern part of Ava, and penetrates into the Chinese province of Yun-nan, where, to the westward of Yung-chang, it exhibits sharp and snowy peaks; it turns abruptly to the north-east on the confines of Ho-kwang, of Keang-si, and of Fuh-kien, and extends, with its snowy summits near to the ocean, where we find, as if it was a prolongation of this chain, an island (Formosa), the mountains of which are covered with snow during the greatest part of the summer, which shows an elevation of at least 1,900 toises (12,469 feet).

Thus we may follow the system of the Himalaya, as a continuous chain, from the Eastern Ocean, and track it by the Hindu-Coosh, across Candahar and Khorasan; and lastly as far as the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan, through an extent of seventy-three degrees of longitude, half that of the Andes.

The western extremity, which is volcanic, but covered likewise with snow to Demavend, loses the peculiar character of a chain in the cluster of the mountains of Armenia, connected with the Sangalu, the Bingheul, and Cashmer-dag, lofty summits in the pashalic of Erzeroum.

The mean direction of the system of the Himalaya is N. 55° W.

(To be concluded next Month.)

ON THE CHAINS OF MOUNTAINS AND VOLCANOS OF CENTRAL ASIA.

Concluded from p. 156.

by baron a. von humboldt.

The aforegoing are the principal features of a geognostic description of Central Asia, which I have drawn up with the aid of numerous materials accumulated by me during a long series of years.

Of these materials, the portion for which we are indebted to modern European travellers is of small importance, in comparison with the prodigious space which is occupied by the chain of the Altaï, the Himalaya mountains, the transverse ridges of the Bolor and the Kingkan.

Those who, at the present day, have published the most important and complete details on these subjects are the learned persons who are conversant with Chinese, Manchoo, and Mongol literature.

The more general the cultivation of the Asiatic dialects shall become, the better shall we appreciate the utility of these so-long-neglected sources, for the study of the geognostic constitution of Middle Asia.

Until M. Klaproth diffuses a new light upon this study by a special work of his own, the picture which I have here exhibited of the four systems of mountains which run from east to west, the materials for which were, in a great part, furnished by the learned person whom I have just named, will not be without its use.

In order to ascertain the characteristic properties which are to be found in the inequalities of the globe’s surface, and to discover the laws which regulate the local disposition of the masses of mountains, and the dips or depressions, we may have recourse to the analogy which other continents may offer.

If once the grand forms and predominating courses of the chains are well determined, we shall see connected with this fundamental principle, as with a common type, whatever appeared at first isolated in these phenomena, and at variance with rules, proclaiming another date of formation.

This method, which I followed in my geognostic description of South America, I have endeavoured to apply here to the limits of the grand masses of Middle Asia.

In bestowing a parting glance upon the four systems of mountains which divide the continent of Asia from east to west, we observe that the southern has the greatest extent, and the fullest developement in respect of length.

The Altaï hardly attains, with its elevated summits, the 78th degree; the Tëen-shan, the chain at whose foot are situated Hami, Aksu, and Cashgar, reaches at least to the meridian of 69° 45′; provided we place Cashgar, according to the authority of the missionaries, in 71° 37′ east of Paris.

The third and fourth systems are, as it were, blended in the grand clusters of Badakshan, Little Tibet, and Cashgar.

Beyond the 69th and 70th meridians there is but one chain, that of the Hindu-Kho, which is depressed towards Herat, but which afterwards, to the southward of Asterabad, rises to a considerable height towards the volcanic and snowy mountain of Demavend.

The table-land of Iran, which, in its greatest extension, from Tehran to Shiraz, appears to attain the average height of 650 toises (4,265 feet), throws off, towards India and Tibet, two branches, the Himalaya and the Kwan-lun chain, and forms a bifurcation of the furrow from which the mountainous masses rise.

Thus the Kwan-lun may be considered as a saliant fracture of the Himalaya.

The intermediate space, comprising Tibet and Kachi, is intersected by numerous rents in all directions.

This analogy with the most common phenomena of the formation of lodes or veins is manifested in a very striking manner, as I have elsewhere shewn, in the long and narrow line of the Cordilleras of the New World.

The astronomical geography of Inner Asia is still very confused, because the elements of the observations are not known, merely the results.

We may trace beyond the Caspian Sea, to the 45th meridian (of Paris), the systems of the Himalaya and the Kwan-lun, which are prolonged till they join in the cluster situated between Cashmer and Fyzabad.

Thus the chain of the Himalaya remains to the south of the Bolor, the Ak-tag, the Mingboolak, and the Ala-tau, between Badakshan, Samerkand, and Turkestan; to the east of the Caucasus it joins the table-land of Azerbaijan, and bounds to the south the great dip or valley, of which the Caspian Sea and lake Aral occupies the lowest basin, and in which a considerable portion of land whose surface is probably 18,000 square leagues, and which lies between the Kooma, the Don, the Volga, the Yak, the Obsheysyrt, lake Aksakal, the Lower Sihon, and the Khanat of Khiva, upon the shores of the Amoo-daria, is situated below the level of the ocean.

The existence of this singular depression has been the object of laborious barometrical observations of levels between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, by MM. Parrot and Engelhardt; between Orenburg and Gouriev at the mouth of the Yayk, by MM. Helmersen and Hoffmann.

A country so low is abundant in tertiary formations, whence proceed garnets, and debris of scorified rocks, and it offers to the geognostic inquirer, from the constitution of its soil, a phenomenon hitherto unique in our planet.

To the south of Baku, and in the gulf of Balkan, this aspect is materially modified by volcanic influence.

The Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburgh has recently complied with my solicitations to get determined by a series of stations of barometric levels upon the north-eastern edge of this basin, upon the Volga between Kamyshin and Saratov, upon the Yayk between the Obsheysyrt, Orenburg, and the Uralsk, upon the Yemba and beyond the hills of Mougojar, by which the Ural extends itself towards the south, on the side of lake Aksakal and towards Sarasu, the position of a geodœsic line, uniting all the points at the level of the surface of the ocean.

A series of barometrical levels continued throughout a very severe winter, during the expedition of Colonel Berg, from the Caspian Sea to the western shore of Lake Aral, at the Bay of Mertvoy Kultuk, by Captains Duhamel and Anjou, has demonstrated that the level of Lake Aral is 117 English feet above that of the Caspian Sea.

I have referred already to the hypothesis, according to which this great dip of the land of Western Asia was formerly continued as far as the mouth of the Ob and the Frozen Sea, by a valley traversing the desert of Kara-koum and the numerous groupes of oases in the steppes of the Kirghiz and Baraba.

Its origin appears to me to be more ancient than that of the Ural mountains, the southern prolongation of which may be traced in an uninterrupted course from the table-land of Gaberlinsk to Oostoort, between lake Aral and the Caspian Sea.

Would not a chain, whose height is so inconsiderable, have entirely disappeared if the great furrow of the Ural had not been formed subsequently to this depression?

Consequently, the period of the sinking of Western Asia coincides rather with that of the swell of the table-land of Iran, that of Central Asia, the Himalaya, the Kwan-lun, the Tëen-shan, and all the old systems of mountains running from east to west; perhaps also with the period of the exaltation of the Caucasus and the cluster of mountains of Armenia and Erzeroum. No part of the earth, not even excepting South Africa, presents a mass of land so extensive, and elevated to so great a height, as in Inner Asia.

The principal axis of this exaltation, which probably preceded the eruption of the chains from the clefts running from east to west, as in the direction of S. W. and N.E., from the cluster of mountains between Cashmer, Badakshan, and the Tsung-ling in Tibet, where are situated the Caïlasa, and the sacred lakes, as far as the snowy summits of the Inshan and Khingkan.

The elevation of so enormous a mass would suffice to produce a hollow which, even at the present day, is perhaps not half filled with water, and which, since it was formed, has been so modified by the action of subterranean forces, that, according to the traditions of Tatars, collected by Professor Eichwald, the promontory of Absheron was formerly united by an isthmus with the opposite coast of the Caspian Sea in Turcomania.

The great lakes, which have been formed in Europe at the foot of the Alps, are a phenomenon analogous to the cavity in which the Caspian Sea is situated, and owe in the same manner their origin to a sinking of the soil.

We shall soon see that it is principally in the compass of this hollow, consequently in the space where the resistance was least, that recent traces of volcanic action are apparent.

The lakes Manasa and Ravan Hrad.

Manasa, in Sanscrit, signifies “spirit.”

Manasa-vara is the easternmost of these two lakes: its name means literally “the most perfect of honourable lakes.

The westernmost lake is named Ravanah Hrad, or “Lake of Ravana,” after the celebrated hero of the Ramdyana.

Bopp.

This direction of the axis of exaltation from the S.W. to the N.E. is again found beyond the 55th degree of latitude, in the space comprized between Western Siberia, a low country, and Eastern Siberia, a country full of chains of mountains: this space is bounded by the meridian of Irkutsk, the Frozen Sea, and the Sea of Okotsk. Dr. Erdman has discovered among the Aldan mountains, at Allakh-yuma, a peak 5,000 feet high.

To the north of the Kwan-lun, the chain of Northern Tibet, and to the west of the meridian of Peking, the portions of elevated land most important in respect to the extent and height, are the following:—1.

To the east of the cluster of the Khokhonoor, the space between Toorfan, Tangout, the great sinuosity of the Hwang-ho, Garjan, and the chain of the Khingkhan, a space which comprehends the great desert of Gobi.

2. The table-land between the snowy mountains of Khanghay and Tangnu, and between the sources of the Yeniseï, the Selengga and the Amoor.

3. To the west of the district watered by the upper course of the Oxus (Amu), and of the Jaxartes (Sihoon); between Fyzabad, Balkh, Samarkend and the Ala-tau near Turkestan, to the westward of the Bolor (Beloot-tag).

The elevation of this transverse ridge has produced in the soil of the great longitudinal valley of the Tëen-shan-nar-lu, between the second and third systems of mountains from east to west, or between the Tëen-shan and the Kwanlun, a counter-slope from west to east, whilst in the longitudinal valley of the Tëenshan-pe-lu in Zungaria, between the Tëen-shan and the Altaï, a general declivity is observable from east to west.

The position of mount Aral-toobeh, which formerly emitted fire, of the existence of which I became aware from the itineraries of Colonel Gens, becomes more interesting when we compare it with that of the volcanos of Pïhshan and Ho-chow, on the northern and southern sides of the Tëen-shan, with that of the solfatara of Urumtsi, and with that of the adjoining chasm of lake Darlay, which exhales ammoniacal vapours.

The researches of MM. Klaproth and Rémusat acquainted us with this last fact upwards of six years ago.

The volcano situated in about the latitude of 42° 25′ or 42° 35′, between Korgos, on the banks of the Ele, and Kucha, in Little Bucharia, belongs to the chain of the Tëen-shan: perhaps it may be on the northern face, three degrees to the eastward of lake Yssi-kul or Tremoortu.

Chinese authors call it Pïh-shan (“White Mountain”), Ho-shan, and Aghi (“Fiery Mountain.”) It is not known with certainty whether the name of Pïh-shan implies that its summit reaches the line of perpetual snow, which the height of this mountain would determine, at least the minimum; or whether it merely denotes the glittering hue of a peak covered with saline substances, pumice stone, and volcanic ashes in decomposition.

A Chinese author of the seventh century says: at 200 le, or fifteen leagues, to the north of the city of Kwei-chow (now Kucha), in about the latitude of 41° 37′ and longitude 80° 35′ E., according to the astronomical determination of the missionaries made in the country of the Eleuths, rises the Pïh-shan, which emits fire and smoke without interruption.

It is from thence sal ammoniac is brought; upon one of the declivities of the Fiery Mountain (Ho-shan), all the stones burn, melt, and flow to a distance of some tens of le.

The fused mass hardens as it becomes cold.

The natives use it in disorders as a medicine: sulphur is also found there.

The details given M. Klaproth (Tabl. Hist. de l’ Asie, p. 110; Mém. relatifs à l’Asie, t. ii. p. 358) are the most complete, and derived principally from the history of the Ming dynasty. M.

Abel-Rémusat (Journ. Asiat. t. v. p. 45; Descrip.

de Khotan, t. ii. p. 9), has added more in the Japanese translation of the grand Chinese Encyclopædia.

The root ag, which is found in the word Aghi, according to M. Klaproth, signifies “fire” in Hindustani.

To the south of Pïh-shan, in the neighbourhood of Khoten, belonging to the Teen-shan-nar-lu, there can be no doubt that, prior to our era, Sanscrit was spoken, or a language possessing a strong analogy with it: but in Sanscrit a flaming mountain is called Agni-ghiri.

According to M. Bopp, Aghi is not a Sanscrit word. Humboldt.

The root ag, which is found in the word Aghi, signifies “fire” in all the dialects of Hindustan; this element is ag in Hindustani, agh in Mahratta, and the form of agi is still preserved in the dialect of the Punjab.

The word agni, by which “fire” is commonly designated in Sanscrit, belongs to the same root, as well as agun in Bengalee, ogun in Russian, and the ignis of the Latins. Klaproth.

The history of the Chinese dynasty of Tang, speaking of the lava from the Pïh-shan, states that it ran like liquid fat.

Klaproth.

This is not lava, but the saline particles which appear in the form of an efflorescence on its surface.

M. Klaproth observes that this mountain is now called Khalar, and that, conformably to the account given by the Bokhars who bring to Siberia sal ammoniac (called nao-ska in Chinese, and nōshāder in Persian), the mountain to the south of Korgos is so abundant in this species of salt that the natives frequently employ it as a means of paying their tribute to the emperor of China.

In a recent Description of Central Asia, published at Peking in 1777, we find the following statement:—“the province of Ku-cha produces copper, saltpetre, sulphur, and sal ammoniac.

The latter article comes from an ammoniac mountain to the north of the city of Ku-cha, which is full of chasms and caverns.

These apertures, in spring, summer, and autumn, are filled with fire, to such a degree that, during the night the mountain appears illuminated by thousands of lamps.

No one is then able to approach it.

In winter alone, when the vast quantity of snow has extinguished the fire, the natives are able to labour in collecting the sal ammoniac, for which purpose they strip themselves quite naked.

The salt is found in caverns, in the form of stalactites, which renders it difficult to be detached.”

The name of Tartarian salt, formerly given in commerce to this salt, ought to have long ago directed attention to the volcanic phenomena of Central Asia.

The Pïh-shan of the ancient Chinese, at present has the Turk name of Eshik-bash: Eshik is a species of goat, and bash signifies “head.”

Sulphur is produced there in abundance.

The Eshik-bash belongs to the elevated mountains which in the time of the Wei dynasty (the third century) bounded, to the north-west, the kingdom of Kwei-tsu (Ku-cha); it is the Aghi-shan under the Suy dynasty (in the early moiety of the seventh century).

The history of this dynasty relates that this mountain always shewed fire and smoke, and that sal-ammoniac was obtained there.

In the description of the Western country, which forms a part of the history of the Tang dynasty, we find that the mountain in question was then called Aghi-teen-shan (which may be translated “mountain of fields of fire”), or Pïh-shan (“white mountain”), that it was to the north of the city of Ilolo, and that it emitted perpetual fire. Ilolo (or perhaps Irolo, Ilor, or Irol) was then the residence of the King of Kwei-tsu.

The Eshik-bash is to the north of Ku-cha, and 200 le to the west of the Khan-tengri, which forms part of the chain of the Teen-shan.

The Eshik-bash is very large, and much sulphur and sal-ammoniac is even now collected there.

It gives birth to the river Eshik-bash-gol, which flows to the south of the city of Kucha, and falls, after a course of 200 le, into the Erghew.

M. Cordier, in his letter to M.

Abel Rémusat, “on the existence of two burning volcanos in Central Asia,” calls Pïh-shan a solfatara like that of Puzzuoli.

In the state in which it is described in the work cited further back, the Pïh-shan might well deserve only the name of an extinct volcano, although the igneous phenomena are wanting in the solfataras I have seen: such as those of Puzzuoli, the crater of the peak of Teneriffe, the Rucu-pishinsha, and the volcano of Jorullo; but passages in more ancient Chinese historians, who relate the march of the army of the Heung-nus, in the first century of our era, speak of masses of rocks in fusion flowing to the distance of some miles: so that it is impossible, in these expressions, not to understand eruptions of lava.

The ammoniac mountain between Kucha and Korgos has also been a volcano, in activity, in the strictest sense of the word: a volcano which emitted torrents of lava in the centre of Asia, 400 geographical leagues from the Caspian Sea to the west, 433 from the Frozen Sea to the north, 504 from the Great Ocean to the east, and 440 from the Indian-Ocean to the south.

This is not the place to discuss the question relative to the influence of the proximity of the sea on the action of volcanos; I merely solicit attention to the geographical position of the volcanos of Inner Asia, and their reciprocal relations.

The Pïh-shan is distant from 300 to 400 leagues from all the seas.

When I returned from Mexico, some celebrated mineralogists expressed their astonishment when they heard me speak of the volcanic eruption of the plain of Jorullo, and of the volcano of Popocatepetl, as still in activity; although the former is only thirty leagues from the sea, and the latter forty-three leagues.

Gebel Koldaghi, a conical and smoking mountain of Kordofan, of which Mr. Rüppell was told at Dongola, is 150 leagues from the Red Sea, and this distance is but a third of that at which the Pïh-shan, which for 1,700 years has emitted torrents of lava, is situated from the Indian Ocean.

The hypothesis, conformably to which the Andes present no volcano in activity in those parts where the chain recedes from the sea, is without foundation.

The system of mountains of the Caraccas, which run from east to west, or the chain of the coast of Venezuela, is shaken by violent earthquakes, but has no more apertures which are in permanent communication with the interior of the earth, and which discharge lava, than the chain of the Himalaya, which is little more than 100 leagues from the gulf of Bengal, or the Ghauts, which may almost be termed a coast-chain.

Where trachyte has been unable to penetrate across the chains when they have been elevated, they discover no chasms; no channels are opened whereby the subterranean forces can act in a permanent manner at the surface.

The remarkable fact of the proximity of the sea wherever volcanos are still in activity,—a fact which, in general, is not to be denied,— seems to be accounted for less by the chemical agency of the water, than by the configuration of the crust of the globe, and the deficiency of resistance which, in the vicinity of maritime basins, the elevated masses of the continent oppose to elastic fluids, and to the efflux of bodies in fusion in the interior of our planet.

Real volcanic phenomena may occur, as in the old country of the Eleuths, and at Toorfan, to the south of the Tëen-shan, wherever, owing to ancient resolutions, a fissure is opened in the crust of the globe at a distance from the sea.

The reason why volcanos in activity are not more rarely remote from the sea, is merely because, wherever an eruption has been unable to force itself through the declivity of continental masses towards a maritime basin, a very unusual concurrence of circumstances is requisite to permit a permanent communication between the interior of the globe and the atmosphere, and to form apertures which, like intermittent warm springs, effuse, instead of water, gases and oxidised earths in fusion, in other words, lava.

To the eastward of the Pïh-shan, the “White Mountain” of the Eleuths, the whole northern slope of the Tëen-shan presents volcanic phenomena: “lava and pumice-stone are seen there, and even considerable solfataras, which are called ‘fiery places.’ The solfatara of Uroomtsi is five leagues in circumference; in winter it is not covered with snow; it would be supposed to be full of ashes.

If a stone be thrown into this basin, flames issue forth, as well as a black smoke, which continues some time.

Birds dare not fly over these fiery places.”

Eastward, sixty leagues from Pïh-shan, is a lake of very considerable extent, the different names of which in the Chinese, Kirghis, and Calmuc languages, signify “warm salt and ferruginous water.”

If we cross the volcanic chain of the Tëen-shan, we find E.S.E. of lake Yssikul (so often mentioned in the itineraries which I have collected), and of the volcano of the Pïh-shan, the volcano of Toorfan, which may also be called the volcano of Ho-chow (“City of Fire”), for it is very near that city. M.

Abel Rémusat has made particular mention of this volcano in his Histoire de Khoten, and in his letter to M. Cordier.

No reference is made to stony masses in fusion (torrents of lava), there, as at Pïh-shan; but “a column of smoke is seen continually to issue; this smoke gives place at night to a flame like that of torch.

Birds and other animals, upon which the light falls, appear of a red colour.

The natives, when they go thither to collect the nao-sha, or sal ammoniac, put on wooden shoes, for leather soles would be very soon burned.”

Sal ammoniac is procured at the volcano of Ho-chow not only in the form of a crust or sediment, according as it is deposited by the vapours which exhale it; but Chinese books likewise make mention of “a greenish liquor collected in cavities, which is boiled and evaporated, and from it sal ammoniac is obtained in the form of small lumps like sugar, of extreme whiteness and perfect purity.”

Ho-chow, a city, now destroyed, was a league and a half to the east of Toorfan.

M. Rémusat calls the volcano of Pïh-shan, to the north of Kucha, the volcano of Bishbalik.

From the time of the Mongols in China, all the country between the northern slope of the Tëen-shan and the little chain of the Tarbagatay has been called Bishbalik.

Pïh-shan and the volcano of Ho-chow or Toorfan are 140 leagues apart, in the direction of east and west.

About forty leagues westward of the meridian of Ho-chow, at the foot of the gigantic Bokhda-ula, is the great solfatara of Uroomtsi.

At 140 leagues north-west of this, in a plain adjoining the banks of the Khobok, which flows into the small lake of Darlay, rises a hill, “the clefts of which are very warm, though they do not exhale smoke (visible vapours): the sal ammoniac in these crevices is sublimed into so solid a coating, that the stone is obliged to be broken in order to get it.”

These four places hitherto known, namely, Pïh-shan, Ho-chow, Uroomtsi, and Khobok, which exhibit evident volcanic phenomena, in the interior of Asia, are 130 or 140 leagues to the south of the point of Chinese Zungaria, where I was at the beginning of 1829.

Aral-tubeh, the conical and insular mountain of lake Ala-kul, which has been in a state of ignition in historical times, and which is mentioned in the itineraries collected at Semipolatinsk, is in the volcanic territory of Bishbalik.

This insular mountain is situated to the west of the ammoniac-cavern of Khobok, and to the north of Pïh-shan, which still emits light, and which formerly discharged lava, and at a distance of sixty leagues from each of these two points.

From Lake Ala-kul to Lake Zaisang, where the Russian Cossacks of the line of the Irtish exercise the right of fishing, by connivance of the Mandarins, the distance is reckoned at fifty-one leagues.

The Tarbagatay, at the foot of which is situated Choogonchak, a town of Chinese Mongolia, and where Dr. Meyer, the learned and enterprizing companion of M. Ledebour, fruitlessly essayed, in 1825, to prosecute his researches in natural history, extends to the south-west of Lake Zaisang towards the Ala-kul.

We are thus acquainted, in the interior of Asia, with a volcanic territory, the surface of which is upwards of 2,500 square leagues, and which is distant 300 or 400 leagues from the sea: it occupies a moiety of the longitudinal valley situated between the first and second systems of mountains.

The chief seat of volcanic action seems to be in the Tëen-shan.

Perhaps the colossal Bokhda-ula is a trachytic mountain like Chimborazo.

On the side north of the Tarbagatay and of Lake Darlay the action becomes weaker; yet Mr.

Rose and I found white trachyte along the south-western declivity of the Altaï, upon a bell-shaped hill at Ridderski, near the village of Butachikha.

I do not wish to express any doubt respecting the existence of the Ala-kul and the Alaktugul-noor, lakes in the vicinity of each other; but it appears singular to me, that the Tatars and Mongols, who traverse these parts so often, and who have been questioned at Semipolatinsk, should only know the Ala-kul, and assert that the Alaktugul-noor owes its existence to a confusion of names. M. Pansner, in his Russian map of Inner Asia, which may be implicitly relied on with regard to the country north of the course of the Ele, makes the Ala-kul (properly Ala-ghul, or “party-coloured lake”) communicate with the Alaktugul by five channels.

Possibly the isthmus which separates these lakes may be marshy, which causes them to be considered as one.

Casim Bek, a professor at Casan, and who is a Persian by birth, insists that tugul is a Tataro-Turkish negation, and that, therefore, Alaktugul signifies “the lake not variegated,” as Ala-tau-ghul implies “the lake of the variegated mountain.”

Perhaps the names of Ala-kul and Ala-tugul mean merely “lake near the Ala-tau mountain,” which stretches from Turkestan to Zungaria.

The small map published by the English missionaries of the Caucasus, does not contain the Ala-kul; there appears only a group of three lakes, the Balkashi, the Alak-tugul, and the Koorgeh.

The hypothesis, however, according to which the vicinity of large lakes produces, in the interior of Asia, the same effect upon volcanos remote from the sea, as the ocean, is without foundation.

The volcano of Toorfan is surrounded only by insignificant lakes; and, as it has been already remarked, Lake Temoortu or Yssi-kul, which is less than double the extent of the Lake of Geneva, is thirty-three leagues from the volcano of Pïh-shan.—Humboldt.

The Chinese maps represent the two lakes as one, having a mountain in the midst.

This lake is called Ala-kul, its eastern portion bears the name of Alak-tugul-nor, and its western gulf that of She-bartukholay.—Klaproth.

On both sides of the Tëen-shan, north and south, violent earthquakes are felt.

The town of Aksu was entirely destroyed by a convulsion of this kind at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Professor Eversman, of Casan, whose repeated travels have made us acquainted with Bokhara, was told by a Tatar, who was a servant of his, well acquainted with the country between Lakes Balkashi and Ala-kul, that earthquakes were very common there.

In eastern Siberia, to the north of the fiftieth parallel, the centre of the circle of shocks appears to be at Irkutsk, and in the deep basin of Lake Baikal, where, on the Kiachta road, especially on the banks of the Jeda and the Chekoy, basalt is found with olivine, cellular amygdaloid, shabassie, and apophyllite.

In the month of February 1829, Irkutsk suffered greatly from violent earthquakes; and in the month of April following, convulsions were also felt at Ridderski, which were perceived at the bottom of the mines, where they were very severe.

But this part of the Altaï is the extreme limit of the circle of shocks; further to the west, in the plains of Siberia, between the Altaï and the Ural, as well as along the entire chain of the latter, no motion has hitherto been observed.

The volcano of Pïh-shan, the Aral-tubeh, to the westward of the caverns of sal ammoniac of Khobok, Ridderski, and the portion of the Altaï which abounds in metals, are situated for the most part in a direction which but slightly deviates from that of the meridian.

Perhaps the Altaï may be comprehended within the circle of the convulsions of the Tëenshan, and the shocks of the Altaï, instead of coming only from the east, or from the basin of the Baikal, may also come from the volcanic country of Bishbalik.

In many parts of the new continent it is clear that the circles of shocks intersect each other, that is, the same country receives terrestrial convulsion periodically on two different quarters.

Dr. Hess, associate of the Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburgh, who resided on the borders of the Baikal and to the south of the lake, from 1826 to 1828, gives us reason to expect a geological description of a portion of the remarkable country which he traversed.

He frequently observed at Verkhnei- Oudinsk granite alternating several times with conglomerates.

The volcanic territory of Bishbalik is to the eastward of the great dip of the old world.

Travellers who have journeyed from Orenburg to Bokhara, relate that at Sussak in the Kara-tau, which forms with the Ala-tau a promontory to the north of the town of Taraz in Turkestan, on the edge of the dip, warm springs spout up.

On the south and on the west of the inner basin we find two volcanos still in activity; Demavend, which is visible from Tehran, and the Seyban of Ararat, which is covered with vitrified lava.

The trachytes, porphyries, and thermal springs of the Caucasus are well known.

On both sides of the isthmus between the Caspian and Black Seas, naphtha springs and volcanos of mud are numerous.

The muddy volcano of Taman, of which Pallas and Messrs. Engelhard and Parrot have described the last fiery eruption, in 1794, from the reports of Tatars, is, according to the very sensible remark of Mr. Eichwald, “a dependency of Baku, and of the whole peninsula of Absheron.”

Eruptions take place where the volcanic forces encounter least opposition.

On the 27th November 1827, crackings and tremblings of the earth, of a violent character, were succeeded, at the village of Gokmali, in the province of Baku, three leagues from the western shore of the Caspian Sea, by an eruption of flames and stones.

A space of ground, 200 toises long and 150 wide, burned for twenty-seven hours without intermission, and rose above the level of the neighbouring soil.

After the flame became extinct, columns of water were ejected, which continue to flow till the present hour.

I am gratified at being enabled to state here, that Mr. Eichwald’s periplus of the Caspian Sea, which will soon appear, will contain some very important physical and geological observations, more particularly upon the connexion of fiery eruptions with the appearance of naphtha-springs and strata of sal gem, on masses of calcareous rock hurled to considerable distances, on the elevation and sinking of the bed of the Caspian Sea, which still continue; on the passing of black porphyry, partly vitrified and containing garnets (melapyres), through granite, red quartzose porphyry, very dark syenite, and calcareous spar, in the Krasnovodsk mountains washed by the bay of the Balkan, to the northward of the ancient mouth of the Oxus (Amoo-doria).

We shall learn from the geognostic description of the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, where the island of Chabekan discovers naphtha-springs the same as Baku and the isles between this town and Salian, what species of crystallized rocks are hidden beneath the rocks in horizontal strata in the peninsula of Absheron, where the action of subterranean fire is always felt, and where it has not yet been able to reach the open air.

The porphyries of the Caucasus, which run from W.N.W. to E.S.E., a position and a direction which I have already mentioned as the reason of the presumed connexion of this chain with the cleft of the Tëen-shan, discover themselves again, traversing all the rocks nearly to the centre of the great dip of the old world, to the east of the Caspian Sea, in the mountains of Krasnovodsk and Kurreh.

Recent researches and the traditions of the Tatars inform us, that the existence of naphtha-springs has always been preceded by fiery eruptions.

Several salt lakes on the two opposite shores of the Caspian Sea have a very elevated temperature; and blocks of sal gem, traversed by asphaltum, are formed, as Mr. Eichwald remarks with much shrewdness, “by the effect of a sudden volcanic action, as at Vesuvius, in the Cordilleras of South America and in Azarbaijan, or even under our own observation by the slow but continued action of heat.” M. L. de Buch has long directed his attention to the connexion of the volcanic forces with the masses of enhedral sal-gem, which traverse so often and so many formations of horizontal strata.

The height of Ararat, according to Parrot, is 2,700 toises (17,718 feet); that of Elbourz, according to Kuppfer, 2,560 (16,800 feet) above the level of the ocean.

In an eruption of this volcano in 1805, M. Guy Lussac and I found small fragments of sal-gem in the lava as it cooled.

My Tatar itineraries likewise speak of sal-gem in the neighbourhood of a volcanic mountain of the Tëen-shan, north of Aksu, between the station of Turpa-gad and Mount Arbab.

We have already seen that the circles of the terrestrial convulsions, of which Lake Baikal or the volcanos of Tëen-shan are the centre, do not extend in western Siberia beyond the western declivity of the Altaï, and do not pass the Irtish or the meridian of Semipolatinsk.

In the chain of the Ural, earthquakes are not felt, nor, notwithstanding the rocks abound in metals, neither basalt or olivine is found, nor trachytes, properly so called, nor mineral springs.

The circle of the phenomena of Azarbaijan, which includes the peninsula of Absheron, or the Caucasus, often extends as far as Kizlar and Astrakhan.

It is the same on the border of the great hollow in the west.

If we direct our observation from the Caucasian isthmus to the north and north-west, we come to the country of grand formations in horizontal and tertiary strata, which occupy southern Russia and Poland.

In this region, the rocks of pyroxene pierce the red free-stone of Yekaterinoslav, whilst asphaltum and springs impregnated with sulphurous gas denote other masses concreted in the form of sediment.

It may also be mentioned as an important fact, that in the chain of the Ural, which abounds so much in serpentine and amphibole, and which serves as a boundary between Europe and Asia, a true amygdaloidal formation appears at Griasnushinskaia, towards its southern extremity.

We shall content ourselves here with observing, with reference to the ingenious opinions recently promulgated by M.

Elie de Beaumont, respecting the relative age and the parallelism of systems of contemporary mountains, that in the interior of Asia likewise, the four grand chains which run from east to west are of a totally different origin from the chains which lie in a direction north and south, or N. 30° W., and S. 30° E. The chain of the Ural, the Belor, or Beloor-tag, the Ghauts of Malabar, and the Kingkhan, are probably more modern than the chains of the Himalaya and the Tëen-shan.

The systems of different epochs are not always separated from each other by any considerable space, as in Germany, and in the greater part of the new continent.

Frequently, chains of mountains, or axes of exaltation, of dissimilar directions, and belonging to epochs totally different, are nearly approximated by nature; resembling so far the characters on a monument which, crossing different ways, were engraved at different periods, and carry intrinsic marks of their own date.

Thus, in the south of France, are seen chains and undulated swellings, some of which are parallel to the Pyrenees and others to the western Alps.

The same diversity of geological phenomena is apparent in the high land of Central Asia, where isolated portions appear as it were surrounded and enclosed by subdivisions, in parallel lines, of the systems of mountain.