CHAPTER ONE.
THE HIMALAYAS.
Who has not heard of the Himalayas--those Titanic masses of mountains
that interpose themselves between the hot plains of India and the cold
table-lands of Thibet--a worthy barrier between the two greatest empires
in the world, the Mogul and the Celestial? The veriest tyro in
geography can tell you that they are the tallest mountains on the
surface of the earth; that their summits--a half-dozen of them at
least--surmount the sea-level by more than five miles of perpendicular
height; that more than thirty of them rise above twenty thousand feet,
and carry upon their tops the eternal snow!
The more skilled geographer, or _geognosist_, could communicate hundreds
of other interesting facts in relation to these majestic mountains; vast
volumes might be filled with most attractive details of them--their
_fauna_, their _sylva_, and their _flora_. But here, my reader, we have
only space to speak of a few of the more salient points, that may enable
you to form some idea of the Titanic grandeur of these mighty masses of
snow-crowned rock, which, towering aloft, frown or smile, as the case
may be, on our grand empire of Ind.
