spinal cord he was far in advance of his contemporaries. As an operator he was more cautious than brilliant. This was doubtless due partly to his living in the pre-anaesthetics period, and partly to his own consummate anatomical knowledge, as is indicated by the method for opening deep abscesses which is known by his name. But he could be bold when necessary; he was the first to reduce a case of obturator hernia by abdominal section, and one of the first to practise lumbar colostomy. He died at Clapham on the 14th of September 1878.
HILTON, WILLIAM (1786–1839), English painter, was born
in Lincoln on the 3rd of June 1786, son of a portrait-painter.
In 1800 he was placed with the engraver J. R. Smith, and
about the same time began studying in the Royal Academy
school. He first exhibited in this institution in 1803, sending
a “Group of Banditti”; and he soon established a reputation
for choice of subject, and qualities of design and colour superior
to the great mass of his contemporaries. He made a tour in
Italy with Thomas Phillips, the portrait-painter. In 1813,
having exhibited “Miranda and Ferdinand with the Logs of
Wood,” he was elected an associate of the Academy, and in
1820 a full academician, his diploma-picture representing
“Ganymede.” In 1823 he produced “Christ crowned with
Thorns,” a large and important work, subsequently bought
out of the Chantrey Fund; this may be regarded as his masterpiece.
In 1827 he succeeded Henry Thomson as keeper of the
Academy. He died in London on the 30th of December 1839,
Some of his best pictures remained on his hands at his decease—such
as the “Angel releasing Peter from Prison” (life-size),
painted in 1831, “Una with the Lion entering Corceca’s Cave”
(1832), the “Murder of the Innocents,” his last exhibited
work (1838), “Comus,” and “Amphitrite.” The National
Gallery now owns “Edith finding the Body of Harold” (1834),
“Cupid Disarmed,” “Rebecca and Abraham’s Servant”
(1829), “Nature blowing Bubbles for her Children” (1821),
and “Sir Calepine rescuing Serena” (from the Faerie Queen)
(1831). In the National Portrait Gallery is his likeness of John
Keats, with whom he was acquainted. In a great school or
period Hilton could not count as more than a respectable
subordinate; but in the British school of the earlier part of
the 19th century he had sufficient elevation of aim and width
of attainment to stand conspicuous.
HILVERSUM, a town in the province of North Holland,
18 m. by rail S.E. of Amsterdam. It is connected with Amsterdam
by a steam tramway, passing by way of the small fortified
towns of Naarden and Muiden on the Zuider Zee. Pop. (1900)
20,238. It is situated in the middle of the Gooi, a stretch of
hilly country extending from the Zuider Zee to about 5 m.
south of Hilversum, and composed of pine woods and sandy
heaths. A convalescent home, the Trompenberg, was established
here in 1874, and there are a town hall, middle-class and technical
schools, and various places of worship, including a synagogue.
Hilversum manufactures large quantities of floor-cloths and
horse-blankets.
HIMALAYA, the name given to the mountains which form
the northern boundary of India. The word is Sanskrit and
literally signifies “snow-abode,” from him, snow, and álaya,
abode, and might be translated “snowy-range,” although that
expression is perhaps more nearly the equivalent of Himachal,
another Sanskrit word derived from him, snow, and áchal,
mountain, which is practically synonymous with Himalaya
and is often used by natives of northern India. The name
was converted by the Greeks into Emodos and Imaos.
Modern geographers restrict the term Himalaya to that portion of the mountain region between India and Tibet enclosed within the arms of the Indus and the Brahmaputra. From the bend of the Indus southwards towards the plains of the Punjab to the bend of the Brahmaputra southwards towards the plains of Assam, through a length of 1500 m., is Himachal or Himalaya. Beyond the Indus, to the north-west, the region of mountain ranges which stretches to a junction with the Hindu Kush south of the Pamirs, is usually known as Trans-Himalaya. Thus the Himalaya represents the southern face of the great central upheaval—the plateau of Tibet—the northern face of which is buttressed by the Kuen Lun.
Throughout this vast space of elevated plateau and mountain face geologists now trace a system of main chains, or axes, extending from the Hindu Kush to Assam, arranged in approximately parallel lines, and traversed at intervals by main lines of drainageStructure of the Himalaya. obliquely. Godwin-Austen indicates six of these geological axes as follows:
1. The main Central Asian axis, the Kuen Lun forming the northern edge or ridge of the Tibetan plateau.
2. The Trans-Himalayan chain of Muztagh (or Karakoram), which is lost in the Tibetan uplands, passing to the north of the sources of the Indus.
3. The Ladakh chain, partly north and partly south of the Indus—for that river breaks across it about 100 m. above Leh. This chain continues south of the Tsanpo (or Upper Brahmaputra), and becomes part of the Himalayan system.
4. The Zaskar, or main chain of the Himalaya, i.e. the “snowy range” par excellence which is indicated by Nanga Parbat (overlooking the Indus), and passes in a south-east direction to the southern side of the Deosai plains. Thence, bending slightly south, it extends in the line of snowy peaks which are seen from Simla to the famous peaks of Gangotri and Nanda Devi. This is the best known range of the Himalaya.
5. The outer Himalaya or Pir Panjal-Dhaoladhar ridge.
6. The Sub-Himalaya, which is “easily defined by the fringing line of hills, more or less broad, and in places very distinctly marked off from the main chain by open valleys (dhúns) or narrow valleys, parallel to the main axis of the chain.” These include the Siwaliks.
Interspersed between these main geological axes are many other minor ridges, on some of which are peaks of great elevation. In fact, the geological axis seldom coincides with the line of highest elevation, nor must it be confused with the main lines of water-divide of the Himalaya.
On the north and north-west of Kashmir the great water-divide
which separates the Indus drainage area from that of
the Yarkand and other rivers of Chinese Turkestan
has been explored by Sir F. Younghusband, and subsequently
by H H. P. Deasy. The general resultThe great northern watershed
of India.
of their investigations has been to prove that the
Muztagh range, as it trends south-eastwards and finally forms a
continuous mountain barrier together with the Karakoram,
is the true water-divide west of the Tibetan plateau. Shutting
off the sources of the Indus affluents from those of the Central
Asian system of hydrography, this great water-parting is distinguished
by a group of peaks of which the altitude is hardly
less than that of the Eastern Himalaya. Mount Godwin-Austen
(28,250 ft. high), only 750 ft. lower than Everest, affords an
excellent example in Asiatic geography of a dominating, peak-crowned
water-parting or divide. From Kailas on the far west
to the extreme north-eastern sources of the Brahmaputra, the
great northern water-parting of the Indo-Tibetan highlands has
only been occasionally touched. Littledale, du Rhins and
Bonvalot may have stood on it as they looked southwards towards
Lhasa, but for some 500 or 600 m. east of Kailas it appears to be
lost in the mazes of the minor ranges and ridges of the Tibetan
plateau. Nor can it be said to be as yet well defined to the east
of Lhasa.
The Tibetan plateau, or Chang, breaks up about the meridian
of 92° E., and to the east of this meridian the affluents of the
Tsanpo (the same river as the Dihong and subsequently
as the Brahmaputra) drain no longer from the elevated
plateau, but from the rugged slopes of a wild regionEastern
Tibet.
of mountains which assumes a systematic conformation where
its successive ridges are arranged in concentric curves around
the great bend of the Brahmaputra, wherein are hidden the
sources of all the great rivers of Burma and China. Neither
immediately beyond this great bend, nor within it in the Himalayan
regions lying north of Assam and east of Bhutan, have
scientific investigations yet been systematically carried out;
but it is known that the largest of the Himalayan affluents of
the Brahmaputra west of the bend derive their sources from the
Tibetan plateau, and break down through the containing bands
of hills, carrying deposits of gold from their sources to the plains,
as do all the rivers of Tibet.
