Chapter L: C. Bryan (5)

The Jordan is two hundred miles long from its source at Antilebanon to the head of the Dead Sea. It is not navigable, nor has it ever had a large town on its banks. The cities Bethsham and Jericho on the west, and Gerasa, Pella, and Gadara to the east of Jordan produced intercourse between the two sides of the river. Yet it is remarkable as the river of the great plain (_ha Arabah_, now el Ghor) of the Holy Land, flowing through the whole from north to south. Lot, from the hills on the north-west of Sodom, seeing the plain well watered by it, as Egypt is by the Nile, chose that district as his home, in spite of the notorious wickedness of the people.

Its sources are three. The northernmost near Hasbeya between Hermon and Lebanon; the stream is called Hasbany. The second is best known, near Banias, _i. e._, Cæsarea Philippi, a large pool beneath a high cliff, fed by gushing streamlets, rising at the mouth of a deep cave; thence the Jordan flows, a considerable stream. The third is at Dan, or Tel el Kady (Daphne); from the north-west corner of a green eminence a spring bursts forth into a clear wide pool, which sends a broad stream into the valley. The three streams unite at Tel Dafneh, and flow sluggishly through marshland into Lake Meron. Captain Newbold adds a fourth, _wady el Kid_ on the south-east of the slope, flowing from the springs Esh Shar. Indeed Antilebanon abounds in gushing streams which all make their way into the swamp between Banias and Huleh and become part of the Jordan. The traditional site of Jacob’s crossing Jordan at his first leaving Beersheba for Padan Aram is a mile and a half from Merom, and six from the Sea of Galilee: in those six its descent with roaring cataracts over the basaltic rocks is 1,050 feet. This, the part known to Naaman in his invasions, is the least attractive part of its course; and was unfavourably contrasted with Abana and Pharpar of his native land. From the Sea of Galilee, it winds 200 miles in the sixty miles of actual distance to the Dead Sea. Its tortuous course is the secret of the great depression (the Dead Sea being 663 feet below the lake of Galilee) in this distance.

Three banks may be noted in the Ghor or Jordan valley, the upper or first slope (the abrupt edge of a wide table land reaching to the Hauran Mountains on the east and the high hills on the west side), the lower or middle terrace embracing the strip of land with vegetation, and the true banks of the river bed, with a jungle of agnus castus, tamarisks, and willows and reed and cane at the edge, the stream being ordinarily thirty yards wide. At the flood, the river cannot be forded, being ten or twelve feet deep east of Jericho; but in summer it can, the water being low. To cross it in the flood by swimming was an extraordinary feat performed by the Gadites who joined David; this was impossible for Israel under Joshua with wives and children. The Lord of the whole earth made the descending waters stand in a heap very far from their place of crossing, viz: by the town of Adam, that is beside Zarthan or Zaretan, the moment that the feet of the priests bearing the ark dipped into the water. The priests then stood in the midst of the dry river bed till all Israel crossed over. Joshua erected a monument of twelve large stones in the river bed where the priests had stood, near the east bank of the river. This would remain at least for a time as a memorial to the existing generation besides the monument erected at Gilgal.

By this lower ford, David passed to fight Syria, and afterwards in his flight from Absalom to Mahanaim, east of Jordan. Thither Judah escorted him and we crossed in a ferry boat. Here Elijah and Elisha divided the waters with the prophets’ mantle. At the upper fords Naaman washed off his leprosy. Here too the Syrians fled, when panic-struck by the Lord.

John the Baptist “first” baptized at the lower ford near Jericho, whither all Jerusalem and Judea resorted, being near; where too, our Lord took refuge from Jerusalem, and where many converts joined Him, and from whence He went to Bethany to raise Lazarus. John’s next baptisms were at Bethabara; thither out of Galilee the Lord Jesus and Andrew repaired after the baptisms in the south, and were baptized. His third place of baptism was near Ænon and Salim, still farther to the north, where the water was still deep though it was summer, after the passover, for there was no ford there; he had to go thither, the water being too shallow at the ordinary fords. John moved gradually northwards towards Herod’s province, where ultimately he was beheaded; Jesus, coming from the north southwards, met John half-way.

The overflow of Jordan dislodged the lion from its lair on the wooded banks. Between Merom and Lake Tiberias the banks are so thickly wooded as often to shut out the view of the water.

Four-fifths of Israel, nine tribes and a half, dwelt west, and one-fifth, two and a half, dwelt east of Jordan. The great altar built by the latter was the witness of the oneness of the two sections. Of the six cities of refuge three were east, three west of Jordan at equal distances.

Jordan enters Gennesareth two miles below the ancient city Julias, or Bethsaida, of Gaulonitis on the east bank. It is seventy feet wide at its mouth, a sluggish, turbid stream. The lake of Tiberias is 653 feet below the Mediterranean level. The Dead Sea is 1,316 feet below the Mediterranean, the springs of Hasbeya are 1,700 above the Mediterranean, so that the valley falls more than 3,000 feet in reaching the north end of the Dead Sea. The bottom descends 1,308 feet lower, in all 2,600 below the Mediterranean. The Jordan, well called “the Descender,” descends eleven feet every mile. Its sinuosity is less in its upper course. Besides the Jabbok it receives the Hieromax (_Yarmuk_) below Gennesareth. From Jerusalem to Jordan is only a distance of twenty miles; in that distance the descent is 3,500 feet, one of the greatest chasms in the earth; Jerusalem is 2,581 feet above the Mediterranean.

Bitumen wells are not far from the Hasbeya in the north. Hot springs abound about Tiberias; and other tokens of volcanic action, tufa, etc., occur near the Yarmuk’s mouth and elsewhere. Only on the east border of Lake Huleh, the land is now well cultivated, and yields largely wheat, maize, rice, etc. Horses, cattle, and sheep, and black buffaloes (the “bulls of Bashan”) pasture around. West of Gennesareth are seen corn, palms, vines, figs, melons, and pomegranates. Cultivation is rare along the lower Jordan, but pink oleanders, arbutus, rose hollyhocks, the purple thistle, marigold, and anemone abound. Tracks of tigers and wild boars, flocks of wild ducks, cranes, and pigeons have been seen by various explorers. There are no bridges earlier than the Roman. The Saracens added or restored some. The Roman bridge of ten arches, was on the route from Tiberias to Gadara. In coincidence with Scripture, the American survey sets down three fords: that at Tarichæa, the second at the Jabbok’s confluence with the Jordan, and that at Jericho. The Jordan seldom now overflows its banks; but Lieutenant Lynch noticed sedge and driftwood high up in the overhanging trees on the banks, showing it still at times overflows the plains. The flood never reaches beyond the lower line of the Ghor, which is covered with vegetation. The plain of the Jordan between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea is generally eight miles broad, but at the north end of the Dead Sea the hills recede so that the width is twelve miles, of which the west part is named “the plains of Jericho.” The upper terrace immediately under the hills is covered with vegetation; under that is the Arabah or desert plain, barren in its southern part except where springs fertilize it, but fertile in its northern part and cultivated by irrigation. Grove remarks of the Jordan: “So rapid that its course is one continued cataract, so crooked that in its whole lower and main course it has hardly a half mile straight, so broken with rapids that no boat can swim any distance continuously, so deep below the adjacent country that it is invisible and can only be with difficulty approached; refusing all communication with the ocean, and ending in a lake where navigation is impossible, unless for irrigation, it is in fact what its Arabic name signifies, nothing but a ‘great watering place,’ _Sheriat el Khebir_.”

THE CONCORD

HENRY D. THOREAU

The Musketaquid, or Grass-ground River, though probably as old as the Nile or Euphrates, did not begin to have a place in civilized history, until the fame of its grassy meadows and its fish attracted settlers out of England in 1635, when it received the other but kindred name of Concord from the first plantation on its banks, which appears to have been commenced in a spirit of peace and harmony. It will be Grass-ground River as long as grass grows and water runs here; it will be Concord River only while men lead peaceable lives on its banks. To an extinct race it was grass-ground, where they hunted and fished, and is still perennial grass-ground to Concord farmers, who own the great meadows, and get the hay from year to year. “One branch of it,” according to the historian of Concord, for I love to quote so good authority, “rises in the south part of Hopkinton, and another from a pond and a large cedar-swamp in Westborough,” and flowing between Hopkinton and Southborough, through Framingham, and between Sudbury and Wayland, where it is sometimes called Sudbury River, it enters Concord at the south part of the town, and after receiving the North or Assabeth River, which has its source a little farther to the north and west, goes out at the north-east angle, and flowing between Bedford and Carlisle, and through Billerica, empties into the Merrimack at Lowell. Between Sudbury and Wayland the meadows acquire their greatest breadth, and when covered with water, they form a handsome chain of shallow vernal lakes, resorted to by numerous gulls and ducks. Just above Sherman’s Bridge, between these towns, is the largest expanse, and when the wind blows freshly in a raw March day, heaving up the surface into dark and sober billows or regular swells, skirted as it is in the distance with alder-swamps and smoke-like maples, it looks like a smaller Lake Huron, and is very pleasant and exciting for a landsman to row or sail over. The farmhouses along the Sudbury shore, which rises gently to a considerable height, command fine water prospects at this season. The shore is more flat on the Wayland side and this town is the greatest loser by the flood. Its farmers tell me that thousands of acres are flooded now, since the dams have been erected, where they remember to have seen the white honeysuckle or clover growing once, and they could go dry with shoes only in summer. Now there is nothing but blue-joint and sedge and cut-grass there, standing in water all the year round. For a long time, they made the most of the driest season to get their hay, working sometimes till nine o’clock at night, sedulously paring with their scythes in the twilight round the hummocks left by the ice; but now it is not worth the getting when they can come at it and they look sadly round to their wood-lots and upland as a last resource.

It is worth the while to make a voyage up this stream, if you go no farther than Sudbury, only to see how much country there is in the rear of us; great hills, and a hundred brooks, and farmhouses, and barns, and haystacks, you never saw before, and men everywhere. Sudbury, that is _Southborough_ men, and Wayland, and Nine-Acre-Corner men, and Bound Rock, where four towns bound on a rock in the river, Lincoln, Wayland, Sudbury, Concord. Many waves are there agitated by the wind, keeping nature fresh, the spray blowing in your face, reeds and rushes waving; ducks by the hundred, all uneasy in the surf, in the raw wind, just ready to rise, and now going off with a clatter and a whistling like riggers straight from Labrador, flying against the stiff gale with reefed wings, or else circling round first, with all their paddles briskly moving, just over the surf, to reconnoitre you before they leave these parts; gulls wheeling overhead, muskrats swimming for dear life, wet and cold, with no fire to warm them by that you know of; their laboured homes rising here and there like haystacks; and countless mice and moles and winged titmice along the sunny, windy shore; cranberries tossed on the waves and heaving up on the beach, their little red skiffs beating about among the alders;--such natural tumult as proves the last day is not yet at hand. And there stands all around the alders, and birches, and oaks, and maples, full of glee and sap, holding in their buds, until the waters subside. You shall perhaps run aground on Cranberry Island, only some spires of last year’s pipe-grass above water, to show where the danger is, and get as good a freezing there as anywhere on the North-west Coast. I never voyaged so far in all my life. You shall see men you never heard of before, whose names you don’t know, going away down through the meadows with long ducking-guns, with watertight boots wading through the fowl-meadow grass, on bleak, wintry, distant shores, with guns at half-cock, and they shall see teal, blue-winged, green-winged, shelldrakes, whistlers, black ducks, ospreys, and many other wild and noble sights before night, such as they who sit in parlours never dream of. You shall see rude and sturdy, experienced men, keeping their castles, or teaming up their summer’s wood, or chopping alone in the woods, men fuller of talk and rare adventure in the sun and wind and rain, than a chestnut is of meat; who were out not only in ’75 and 1812, but have been out every day of their lives; greater men than Homer, or Chaucer, or Shakespeare, only they never got time to say so; they never took to the way of writing. Look at their fields, and imagine what they might write, if ever they should put pen to paper. Or what have they not written on the face of the earth already, clearing, and burning, and scratching, and harrowing, and ploughing, and subsoiling, in and in, and out and out, and over and over, again and again, erasing what they had already written for want of parchment.

As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of to-day is present, so some flitting perspectives, and demi-experiences of the life that is in nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside to time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which never die.

The respectable folks,--
Where dwell they?
They whisper in the oaks,
And they sigh in the hay;
Summer and winter, night and day,
Out on the meadow, there dwell they.
They never die,
Nor snivel, nor cry,
Nor ask our pity
With a wet eye.
A sound estate they never mend,
To every asker readily lend;
To the ocean wealth,
To the meadow health,
To Time his length,
To the rocks strength,
To the stars light,
To the weary night,
To the busy day,
To the idle play;
And so their good cheer never ends,
For all are their debtors, and all their friends.

Concord River is remarkable for the gentleness of its current, which is scarcely perceptible, and some have referred to its influence the proverbial moderation of the inhabitants of Concord, as exhibited in the Revolution, and on later occasions. It has been proposed, that the town should adopt for its coat of arms a field verdant, with the Concord circling nine times around. I have read that a descent of an eighth of an inch in a mile is sufficient to produce a flow. Our river has, probably, very near the smallest allowance. The story is current, at any rate, though I believe that strict history will bear it out, that the only bridge ever carried away on the main branch, within the limits of the town, was driven up stream by the wind. But wherever it makes a sudden bend it is shallower and swifter, and asserts its title to be called a river. Compared with the other tributaries of the Merrimack, it appears to have been properly named Musketaquid, or Meadow River, by the Indians. For the most part, it creeps through broad meadows, adorned with scattered oaks, where the cranberry is found in abundance, covering the ground like a moss-bed. A row of sunken dwarf willows borders the stream on one or both sides, while at a greater distance the meadow is skirted with maples, alders, and other fluviatile trees, overrun with the grape-vine, which bears fruit in its season, purple, red, white, and other grapes. Still farther from the stream, on the edge of the firm land, are seen the gray and white dwellings of the inhabitants.

The sluggish artery of the Concord meadows steals thus unobserved through the town, without a murmur or a pulse beat, its general course from south-west to north-east, and its length about fifty miles; a huge volume of matter, ceaselessly rolling through the plains and valleys of the substantial earth with the moccasined tread of an Indian Warrior, making haste from the high places of the earth to its ancient reservoir. The murmurs of many a famous river on the other side of the globe reach even to us here, as to more distant dwellers on its banks; many a poet’s stream floating the helms and shields of heroes on its bosom. The Xanthus or Scamander is not a mere dry channel and bed of a mountain torrent, but fed by the overflowing springs of fame;--

“And thou Simois, that as an arrowe, clere
Through Troy rennest, aie downward to the sea”;--

and I trust that I may be allowed to associate our muddy but much abused Concord River with the most famous in history.

“Sure there are poets which did never dream
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream
Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose
Those made not poets, but the poets those.”

The Mississippi, the Ganges and the Nile, those journeying atoms from the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh, and Mountains of the Moon, have a kind of personal importance in the annals of the world. The heavens are not yet drained over their sources, but the Mountains of the Moon still send their annual tribute to the Pasha without fail, as they did to the Pharaohs, though he must collect the rest of his revenue at the point of the sword. Rivers must have been the guides which conducted the footsteps of the first travellers. They are the constant lure, when they flow by our doors, to distant enterprise and adventure, and, by a natural impulse, the dwellers on their banks will at length accompany their currents to the lowlands of the globe, or explore at their invitation the interior of continents. They are the natural highways of all nations, not only levelling the ground and removing obstacles from the path of the traveller, quenching his thirst and bearing him on their bosoms, but conducting him through the most interesting scenery, the most populous portions of the globe, and where the animal and vegetable kingdoms attain their greatest perfection.

I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, watching the lapse of the current, an emblem of all progress, following the same law with the system, with time, and all that is made; the weeds at the bottom gently bending down the stream, shaken by the watery wind, still planted where their seeds had sunk, but erelong to die and go down likewise; the shining pebbles, not yet anxious to better their condition, the chips and weeds, and occasional logs and stems of trees that floated past, fulfilling their fate, were objects of singular interest to me, and at last I resolved to launch myself on its bosom and float whither it would bear me.

THE TAGUS

ARTHUR SHADWELL MARTIN

The Tagus rises in that maze of mountains between Cuenca and Tereul on the frontier of New Castile and Aragon. It is the largest river of the Iberian peninsula, having a length of 566 miles. It is of little commercial advantage, however, as a means of traffic and communication, because in Spain its shallows, rapids and cataracts render it unnavigable through much of its course; and only from Villavelha, eighteen miles within the Portuguese frontier does it become navigable for the remaining 115 miles to its mouth. It flows from its source first north-westwards for about thirty miles to its junction with the Gallo, where it turns to the south-west to Toledo, whence it flows westwards to the frontier of Portugal at Abrantes. There it again curves south-westwards and falls into the Atlantic ten miles below Lisbon.

The waves of the Tagus, according to ancient historians, rolled with gold; it is even said that the sceptre of the kings of Portugal is made of the gold dust found in the deposit of this river. However, the Tagus is not now endowed with this auriferous virtue; and its banks in nowise deserve the brilliant descriptions indulged in by ancient and modern poets. They are generally escarpments and rocky gorges. The traveller, who follows the course of the stream through a country often bare, arid and uncultivated, or burnt up by the sultry rays of the sun, sees little but an impetuous water course, narrow and impeded with dangerous rocks, forming dangerous cataracts and rapids. The rocky cliffs that hem it in have little vegetation beyond a few evergreen oaks; and with a few rare exceptions, notably the valleys of Aranjuez and Talavera, which have been embellished with human art and culture there are few parts of Spain so poor and savage in character. In winter, the Tagus has a considerable rise, and covers the few plains to be found along its banks; but in summer, like most of the other Spanish rivers it dwindles to almost nothing; so that even below Santarem, from Alcantara to the confluence of the Zezere, navigation is interrupted by numerous cataracts.

“Of the various phases of its most poetical and picturesque course--first green and arrowy amid the yellow cornfields of New Castile; then freshening the sweet Tempe of Aranjuez, clothing the garden with verdure, and filling the nightingale-tenanted glens with groves; then boiling and rushing around the granite ravines of rock-built Toledo, hurrying to escape from the cold shadows of its deep prison, and dashing joyously into light and liberty, to wander far away into silent plains and on to Talavera, where its waters were dyed with brave blood, and gladly reflected the flash of the victorious bayonets of England,--triumphantly it rolls thence, under the shattered arches of Almaraz, down to desolate Estremadura, in a stream as tranquil as the azure sky by which it is curtained, yet powerful enough to force the mountains of Alcantara. There the bridge of Trajan is worth going a hundred miles to see; it stems the now fierce condensed stream, and ties the rocky gorges together; grand, simple, and solid, tinted by the tender colours of seventeen centuries, it looms like the grey skeleton of Roman power, with all the sentiment of loneliness, magnitude, and the interest of the past and present.

“How stern, solemn, and striking is this Tagus of Spain! No commerce has ever made it its highway--no English steamer has ever civilized its waters like those of France and Germany. Its rocks have witnessed battles, not peace; have reflected castles and dungeons, not quays or warehouses: few cities have risen on its banks, as on those of the Thames and Rhine; it is truly a river of Spain--that isolated and solitary land. Its waters are without boats, its banks without life; man has never laid his hand upon its billows, nor enslaved their free and independent gambols.”

Travellers and tourists never take in the river as a whole, but content themselves with keeping to the railroad, and visiting the more famous towns on the banks,--such as Toledo, Talavera, Aranjuez, Abrantes and Lisbon.

At Toledo, the Tagus ages ago forced its way through a romantic, rocky pass, 2,400 feet above the level of the sea. The walls of the gorge are 200 feet high. This ancient city stands on the north bank of the river which washes its walls on three sides and forms the great protection of the stronghold. Rushing around it, on the east, south and west, between rocky cliffs, it leaves only one approach on the land side, which is defended by an inner and an outer wall. Its magnificent cathedral still repays a visit notwithstanding the vandalism of its foes. The river, after passing Toledo, runs through a deep and long valley, walled up on either hand by lofty mountains. Those on the right bank are always capped with snow, and ranging nearly parallel with the course of the stream, divide the valley of the Tagus from Old Castile and the Salamanca country; the highest parts are known by the names of the Sierra de Gredos, Sierra de Bejar, and Sierra de Gata. In these sierras the Alberche, the Tietar, and the Alagon, take their rise, and, ploughing the valley in a slanting direction, fall into the Tagus.

Talavera de la Reyna is a delapidated ancient town surrounded with interesting old walls, and abounding in antique picturesque fragments. It is situated on the Tagus, seventy-five miles south-west of Madrid, in the centre of a fruit-growing district. It is famous for the great battle fought there in 1809 in which the French suffered a great defeat by Wellington.

Aranjuez is on the left bank of the river, twenty-eight miles south-west of Madrid, in a beautifully wooded valley. Here, for once, the stream runs smoothly between smiling banks.

Abrantes is finely situated on the river seventy miles above Lisbon. Its surrounding hills are covered with vineyards and olive groves; it is strongly fortified, and was an important position during the Peninsula war. Marshal Junot took this city as the title of his Dukedom.

Lisbon is built partly on the right bank of the Tagus and partly on hills behind. It extends for five miles along the estuary, which here forms a safe and spacious harbour.

The principal affluents of this neglected river are the Jarama, Guaddarama, Alberche, Alagon and Zezere from the north, and the Guadiela and Rio del Monte from the south.

THE INDUS

EDWARD BALFOUR

The source of the Indus is in latitude 31° 20′ north, and longitude 80° 30′ east, at an estimated height of 17,000 feet, to the north-west of Lakes Manasarowara and Rawan H’rad in the southern slopes of the Gangri or Kailas Mountains, a short way to the eastwards of Gartop (Garo). The Garo river is the Sing-ge-chu or Indus. From the lofty mountains round Lake Manasarowara, spring the Indus, the Sutlej, the Gogra, and the Brahmaputra. A few miles from Leh, about a mile above Nimo, the Indus is joined by the Zanskar river. The valley where the two rivers unite is very rocky and precipitous, and bends a long way to the south. From this point the course of the Indus, in front of Leh and to the south-east for many miles, runs through a wide valley, but the range of the mountains to the north sends down many rugged spurs. A little lower, the Indus is a tranquil but somewhat rapid stream, divided into several branches by gravelly islands, generally swampy, and covered with low Hippophae scrub. The size of the river there is very much less than below the junction of the river of Zanskar. The bed of the Indus at Pitak, below Leh, has an elevation of about 10,500 feet above the level of the sea, but the town is at least 1,300 feet higher. From the sudden melting of accumulations of ice, and from temporary obstacles, occasioned by glaciers and avalanches in its upper course, this river is subject to irregularities, and especially to debacles or cataclysms, one of which, in June, 1841, produced terrific devastation along its course, down even to Attock.

At the confluence of Sinh-ka-bab with the Shayok, the principal river which joins it on the north from the Kara-Korum Mountains, the river takes the name of Aba-Sin, Father of Rivers, or Indus proper, and flows then between lofty rocks, which confine its furious waters, receiving the tribute of various streams; and at Acho, expanding into a broader surface, it reaches Derbend, the north-west angle of the Panjab, where (about 815 miles from its source) it is 100 yards wide in August, its fullest season. From Derbend it traverses a plain, in a broad channel of no great depth in Attock, in latitude 33° 54′ north, longitude 72° 18′ east, having about 200 yards above this place received the river of Kabul, almost equal in breadth and volume, and attains a width of 286 yards, with a rapid boiling current, running (in August) at the rate of six miles an hour. The breadth of the Indus at Attock depends not only upon the season but the state of the river upwards, and varies from 100 to 260 yards. The whole length of its mountain course, from its source to Attock, is about 1,035 miles, and the whole fall is 16,000 feet, or 15.4 per mile. From Attock to the sea the length is 942 miles, making its whole length, from the Kailas Mountains to the Indian Ocean, 1,977 miles. Its maximum discharge, above the confluence of the Panjab or Five Rivers, occurs in July and August, when it is swollen by the seasonal rains, and it then reaches 135,000 cubic feet, falling to its minimum of 15,000 in December.

In the Tibetan of Ladakh it is commonly designated Tsang-po, or the river, and is the Lampo-ho of the Chinese Pilgrim, Hiwen Thsang, who travelled in the middle of the Seventh Century.

Below the junction of the Panjab rivers down to Schwan, the Indus takes the name of Sar, Siro, or Sira; from below Hyderabad to the sea it is called Lar, and the intermediate portion is called Wicholo (Bich, Hindi), or Central, representing the district lying immediately around Hyderabad, just as, on the Nile, the Wustani, or Midlands of the Arabs, represents the tract between Upper and Lower Egypt. Sir A. Burnes mentions that Sar and Lar are two Baluch words for north and south. The Indus or Sind has been called by that name from time immemorial to the present day, by the races on its banks. The ancients knew that this was the native appellation. Pliny (lib. 6, vi), says, “Indus incolis Sindus appellatus.” The Chinese call the river Sin-tow.

From Attock the course of the Indus to the sea, 940 miles, is south and south-west, sometimes along a rocky channel, between high and perpendicular cliffs, or forcing its way, tumbling and roaring, amidst huge boulders, the immense body of water being pent within a narrow channel, causing occasional whirlpools, dangerous to navigation, to Kalabagh, in latitude 32° 57′ north, longitude 71° 36′ east, situated in a gorge of the great Salt Range, through which the river rushes forth into the plain. In this part of its course it has acquired the name of Nil-ab, or Blue Water, from the colour imparted to it by the blue limestone hills through which it flows. There are some remains of a town on the bank of the river, named Nil-ab (where Timur crossed the Indus) supposed to be the Naulibus or Naulibe of Ptolemy. At Kalabagh the Indus enters a level country, having for a short time the Khursuri Hills, which rise abruptly on the right. It now becomes muddy, and as far as Mittunkote, about 350 miles, the banks being low, the river, when it rises, inundates the country sometimes as far as the eye can reach. Hence the channels are continually changing, and the soil of the country being soft--a mud basin, as Lieutenant Wood terms it,--the banks and bed of the river are undergoing constant alterations. These variations, added to the shoals, and the terrific blasts occasionally encountered in this part of the river, are great impediments to navigation. The population on its banks are almost amphibious; they launch upon its surface, sustained by the inflated skins or mussaks, dried gourds, and empty jars used for catching the celebrated pulla fish, the Hilsa of Bengal. At Mittunkote the Indus is often 2,000 yards broad, and near this place, in latitude 28° 55′ north, longitude 70° 28′ east, it is joined, without violence, by the Panjnad, a large navigable stream, the collected waters of the Sutlej, Beas, Ravi, Chenab, and Jhelum. Its true channel, then a mile and a quarter wide, flows thence through Sind, sometimes severed into distinct streams, and discharges its different branches by various mouths into the Indian Ocean, after a course of 1,977 miles. The Indus, when joined by the Panjnad, never shallows, in the dry season, to less than fifteen feet, and seldom preserves so great a breadth as half a mile. Keeled boats are not suited to its navigation, as they are liable to be upset. The Zoruk, or native boat, is flat-bottomed. Other boats are the Dundi, Dund, Kotal, and Jumpti. Gold is found in some parts of the sands of the Indus.

The shore of its delta, about 125 miles in extent, is low and flat, and at high tide, to a considerable distance inland, overflowed; and generally a succession of dreary, bare swamps.

In the mouths of the Indus, the tides rise about nine feet at full moon, and flow and ebb with great violence, particularly near the sea, when they flood and abandon the banks with incredible velocity. At seventy-five miles from the ocean they cease to be perceptible.

Between the Seer and Kori mouths, at the south-east of the delta, it is overspread with low mangrove jungle, running far into the sea, and from the Seer is a bare, uninhabited marsh. The main stream of the Indus has discharged its waters at many points between Cape Monze, immediately west of Kurachee and gulf of Cutch, if not even that of Cambay. Pitti, Hajamri, and Kediwari, now sea-channels and tidal creeks, shut off from the river, except during the monsoon, are all former mouths of the Indus. The Buggaur or Gharra is still a considerable stream during the inundation; it takes off from the Indus close to Tatta.

Transcriber's Notes:

Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.

Perceived typographical errors have been changed.