aya.~--Tibet, which from the point of view of physical geography
includes a large and little known area in the Kashmir State to the north
of the Karakoram range, is a lofty, desolate, wind swept plateau with a
mean elevation of about 15,000 feet. In the part of it situated to the
north of the north-west corner of Nipal lies the Manasarowar lake, in
the neighbourhood of which three great Indian rivers, the Tsanpo or
Brahmaputra, the Sutlej, and the Indus, take their rise. The Indus flows
to the north-west for 500 miles and then turns abruptly to the south to
seek its distant home in the Indian Ocean. The Tsanpo has a still
longer course of 800 miles eastwards before it too bends southwards to
flow through Assam into the Bay of Bengal. Between the points where
these two giant rivers change their direction there extends for a
distance of 1500 miles the vast congeries of mountain ranges known
collectively as the "Himalaya" or "Abode of Snow." As a matter of
convenience the name is sometimes confined to the mountains east of the
Indus, but geologically the hills of Buner and Swat to the north of
Peshawar probably belong to the same system. In Sanskrit literature the
Himalaya is also known as "Himavata," whence the classical Emodus.

[Illustration: Fig. 2. Orographical Map.]

~The Kumaon Himalaya.~--The Himalaya may be divided longitudinally into
three sections, the eastern or Sikkim, the mid or Kumaon, and the
north-western or Ladakh. With the first we are not concerned. The Kumaon
section lies mainly in the United Provinces, but it includes the sources
of the Jamna, and contains the chain in the Panjab which is at once the
southern watershed of the Sutlej and the great divide between the two
river systems of Northern India, the Gangetic draining into the Bay of
Bengal, and the Indus carrying the enormous discharge of the north-west
Himalaya, the Muztagh-Karakoram, and the Hindu Kush ranges into the
Indian Ocean. Simla stands on the south-western end of this watershed,
and below it the Himalaya drops rapidly to the Siwalik foot-hills and to
the plains. Jakko, the _deodar_-clad hill round which so much of the
life of the summer capital of India revolves, attains a height of 8000
feet. The highest peak within a radius of 25 miles of Simla is the Chor,
which is over 12,000 feet high, and does not lose its snow cap till May.
Hattu, the well-known hill above Narkanda, which is 40 miles from Simla
by road, is 1000 feet lower. But