Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1875 — Mountains of Asia. [ARTICLE]

Mountains of Asia.

In the progress of railroads it cannot be long before Asia will be opened to travel as well as traffic in such a manner as to invite the attention of the world: The railway is already working wonders in India and it eanndt be long before it will make the more interior regions of Chinese Tartary accessible. Nor will the opportunity thus to be offeree be neglected by tourists. If Europe has her Alps Asia has her Himmaleh range. A recent writer in Blackwood's Magazine says that the great cluster of mountains called the Thibetan Kailas (the height of which remains unascertained and some of the peaks of Which may be even higher than Gaurisanker) well deserves to be called the center of the world. It is, at least, the greatest center of elevation and the point from whence flow the Sutlej, the Indus, and the Brahmaputra; while to Thibet, meaning by that word the whole country in which Thibetan is spoken, we may ascribe most of the rivers of the Punjah and also the Jumna, the Ganges, the Irrawaddi, the Yangtse, and even the HoangHo, or great Yellow River. The pass at Shipki, over which I crossed, is one of the lowest of the passes into Chinese Thibet. There is another and more difficult pass close to it, about 12,500 feet high; the others are of greater height,, and the Mana pass between Thibet and Gurwhal ial&iuQfcfit. ,n. ; ..> Again, he says: The view up the Spiti Valley had a wild beauty of its own, and ended in blue peaks at this season nearly free from snow; but the surprising scene before us was on the left bank of the Spiti River and on the right of the Sutlej, or that opposite to which we were? A mountain rose there almost sheer up from the Sutlej, or from 9,000 feet to the height of 22,183 feet, in gigantic walls, towers and aiguille* of creamcolored granite and quartz, which had all the appearance of marble. At various places a stone might have been rolled from the summit of it down into the river, a descent of over 13,000 feet. In appearance it was something like Milan Cathedral of its loftiest spire and magnified many million times, until it reached the height of 12,000 feet; and I either noticed or heard several great falls df rock down its precipitous sides during the eight da A I was on it or in its immediate neighborhood. Here and there the white rock was streaked with white snow, and it was capped by an enormous citadel wit* small beds of wear; but there was very little snow upon the gigantic mass of rock, because the furious winds which forever beat and howl around it allow but little snow to find a resting-place there. At Shipki they told us that even in winter Lio Porgyul, as this mountain is called, presents much the same appearance as it had when we saw it. Half of it rests on Chinese Tartary and the other half on Hanggrang, a province which was ceded by the Chinese less thana century ago to the Rajah of Buasahir, so that Lio Porgyul might well be regarded as a great fortress between Iran and Turan; between the dominions of the Aryan and the Tartar race.