Note 4 — REGINALD HEBER.

The Himalaya mountains have been said, by some other travellers, to be visible, in clear weather, from Patna, a distance of two hundred miles. The fact appears to be by no means improbable. From the window of the library in which these pages are written, the snowy mountains of Switzerland and Savoy—Mont Blanc, the Great and Little St. Bernard, and the peaks of St. Corvin and St. Gothard—are almost constantly visible during the prevalence of the south-west wind. From the appearance of these mountains a tolerable idea may be formed of the aspect of the Himalaya. During summer thin vapours commonly obstruct the view, except in the early dawn; and if, as sometimes happens, the white peaks appear in the afternoon, when the sun’s rays are streaming upon them from the west, they are generally, by the unpractised observer, mistaken for clouds. But in the cool autumnal mornings just before the sun rises above the horizon, Mont Blanc, though one hundred and twenty-five miles distant, is painted with astonishing distinctness upon the sky, and towering above the sea of white vapour which overspreads the great plain of Burgundy and rises almost to the summit of the Jura, seems but a few leagues distant. A little before sunset it presents a totally different aspect. Instead of the dusky mass which we beheld in the morning, we discover the “monarch of mountains” clothed in dazzling white, rising far above every surrounding object; while the glittering pinnacles of the inferior mountains seem to stretch away interminably to the right and left, until their peaks are confounded and lost in the dimness of the horizon. The Mont St. Gothard, which is very distinctly visible, at least during clear weather, is distant one hundred and seventy miles from the point of observation. With respect to Mont Blanc, its whole aspect, when viewed through a good telescope, is so admirably defined, that every inequality in its surface is clearly discernible, so that an excellent sketch of it might be taken from my library. The dark chain of the Jura, which conceals its base, and stretches from Geneva almost to the Rhine, increases by contrast the magnificence of the view, which, for extent and grandeur, falls very little short, perhaps, of any landscape in Europe.