Lower Indus. Gugé, where it has cut through a vast accumulation of deposits by a gully said to be 4000 feet deep, between precipices of alluvial soil. After traversing this plain, the river pierces the Himalayas by a gorge with mountains rising to 20,000 feet on either side. The Sutlej is reported to fall from 10,000 feet above sea-level at Shipki, a Tibetan frontier outpost, to 3000 feet at Rámpur, the capital of a Himálayan State about 60 miles inward from Simla. During this part of its course, the Sutlej runs at the bottom of a deep trough, with precipices and bare mountains which have been denuded of their forests, towering above. Its turbid waters, and their unceasing roar as the river dashes over the rapids, have a gloomy and disquieting effect. Sometimes it grinds to powder the huge pines and cedars entrusted to it to float down to the plains. By the time it reaches Biláspur, it has dropped to 1000 feet above sea-level. After entering British territory, the Sutlej receives the waters of the Western Punjab, and falls into the Indus near Mithánkot, after a course of 900 miles. A full account of the Indus will be found in the article on course of that river in volume vii. of The Imperial Gazetteer of India. About 800 miles of its course are passed among the Himalayas before it enters British territory, and it flows for about 1000 miles more, south-west, through the British Provinces of the Punjab and Sind. In its upper part it is fordable in many places during the cold weather; but it is liable to sudden freshets, in one of which Ranjit Singh is said to have lost a force, variously stated at from 1200 to 7000 horsemen, while crossing by a ford. A little way above Attock, the Indus receives the Kábul river, which brings down the waters of Northern Afghánistán. The volume of those waters, as represented by the Kábul river, is about equal to the volume of the Indus at the point of junction. At Attock, the Indus has fallen, during a course of 860 miles, from its elevation of 16,000 feet at its source in Tibet to under 2000 feet. These 2000 feet supply its fall during the remaining 940 miles of its course. The discharge of the Indus, after receiving all its tributaries, varies from 40,857 to 446,086 cubic feet per second, according to the season of the year. The enormous mass of water spreads itself over a channel of a quarter of a mile to a mile (or at times much more) in breadth. The effect produced by the evaporation from this fluvial expanse is so marked that, at certain seasons, the thermometer is reported to be 10° F. lower close to its surface than on the surrounding arid plains. The Indus supplies a precious store of water THE INDUS AND BRAHMAPUTRA. 13 for irrigation works at various points along its course, and forms the great highway of the Southern Punjab and Sind. In its lower course it sends forth distributaries across a wide delta, with Haidarábád (Hyderábád) in Sind as its ancient political capital, and Karáchi (Kurrachee) as its modern port. The silt which it carries down has helped to form the seaboard islands, mud-banks, and shallows, that have cut off the ancient famous emporia around the Gulf of Cambay from modern commerce. Brahma The BRAHMAPUTRA, like the Sutlej, rises near to the sacred The Tsanlake of Mánasarowar. Indeed, the Indus, the Sutlej, and the Pu or Brahmaputra may be said to start from the same water-parting. putra. The Indus rises on the western slope of the Kailás mountain, the Sutlej on its southern, and the Brahmaputra at some distance from its eastern base. The Mariam-la and other saddles The Kailas watershed. connect the more northern Tibetan mountains, to which the Kailás belongs, with the double Himálayan wall on the south. They form an irregular watershed across the trough on the north of the double wall of the Himalayas ; thus, as it were, blocking up the western half of the great Central Asian trench. The Indus flows down a western valley from this transverse watershed; the Sutlej finds a more direct route to India by a south-western valley. The Brahmaputra, under its Tibetan name of Tsan-pu or Sangpu, has its source in 31° N. lat. and 83 E. long. It flows eastwards down the Tsan-pu valley, passing not very far to the south of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet ; and probably 800 to 900 miles, or about one-half of its total course, are spent in the hollow trough on the north of the Himalayas. This brief account assumes that the Brahmaputra of India is the true continuation of the Sangpu of Tibet. The result of the latest researches into that long mooted question are given under article BRAHMAPUTRA, in volume iii. of The Imperial Gazetteer of India. After receiving several tributaries from the confines of the The Chinese Empire, the river twists round a lofty eastern range of Brahmaputra con the Himalayas, and enters British territory under the name of fluents in the DIHANG, near Sadiyá in Assam. It presently receives two Assam. confluents, the DIBANG river from the northward, and the Brahmaputra proper from the east (lat. 27° 20′ N., long. 95° 50' E.). The united stream then takes its well-known appellation of the Brahmaputra, literally the Son of Brahma the Creator.' It represents a drainage basin of 361,200 square miles, and its summer discharge at Goálpárá in Assam was Brahma for long computed at 146,188 cubic feet of water per second. Recent measurements have, however, shown that this calculation is below the truth. Observations made near Dibrugarh during the cold weather of 1877-78, returned a mean low-water discharge of 116,484 cubic feet per second for the Brahmaputra at the upper end of the Assam valley, together with 16,945 cubic feet per second for its tributary the SUBANSIRI. Total cold-weather discharge for the united stream, over 133,000 cubic feet per second near Dibrugarh. Several affluents join the Brahmaputra during its course through Assam; and the mean low-water discharge at Goálpárá, in the lower end of the Assam valley, must be in excess of the previous computation at 146,188 cubic feet per second. During the rains the channel rises 30 or 40 feet above its ordinary level, and its flood discharge is estimated at over 500,000 cubic feet per second. The Brahmaputra rolls down the Assam valley in a vast putra silt. sheet of water, broken by numerous islands, and exhibiting the operations of alluvion and diluvion on a gigantic scale. It is so heavily freighted with silt from the Himalayas, that the least impediment placed in its current causes a deposit, and may give rise to a wide-spreading, almond-shaped mud-bank. Steamers anchoring near the margin for the night sometimes find their sterns aground next morning on an accumulation of silt, caused by their own obstruction to the current. Broad divergent channels split off from the parent stream, and rejoin it after a long separate existence of uncontrollable meandering. By centuries of alluvial deposit, the Brahmaputra has raised its banks and channel in parts of the Assam valley to a higher level than the surrounding country. Beneath either bank lies a low strip of marshy land, which is flooded in the rainy season. Beyond these swamps, the ground begins to rise towards the hills that hem in the valley of Assam on both sides. The Brahma putra in Bengal. (Jamuná and Meghná.) After a course of 450 miles south-west down the Assam valley, the Brahmaputra sweeps round the spurs of the Gáro Hills due south towards the sea. It here takes the name of the Jamuná, and for 180 miles rushes across the level plains of Eastern Bengal, till it joins the Ganges at Goálanda (lat. 23° 50° N., long. 89° 46' E.). From this point the deltas of the two great river systems of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra unite into one. But before reaching the sea, their combined streams have yet to receive, by way of the CACHAR valley, the drainage of the eastern watershed between Bengal and Burma, CHANGES IN THE BRAHMAPUTRA. 15 under the name of the MEGHNA river, itself a broad and magnificent sheet of water. putra islands. The Brahmaputra is famous not only for its vast alluvial de- Brahmaposits, but also for the historical changes which have taken place siltin its course. One of the islands (the Májulí char), which it has created in its channel out of the silt torn away from the distant Himalayas, covers 441 square miles. Every year, thousands of acres of new land are thus formed out of mud and sand; some of them destined to be swept away by the inundations of the following year; others to become the homes of an industrious peasantry or the seats of busy river marts. Such formations its course. give rise to changes in the bed of the river-changes which within a hundred years have completely altered the course of the Brahmaputra through Bengal. In the last century, the stream, on issuing from Assam, bent close round the spurs of the Garo Hills in a south-easterly direction. This old bed of the Brahmaputra, the only one recognised by Major Rennel in 1765-75, has now been deserted. It retains the ancient name Great of the Brahmaputra, but during the hot weather it is little more changes in than a series of pools. The modern channel, instead of twisting round the Garo Hills to the east, bursts straight southwards towards the sea under the name of the Jamuna, and is now separated at places by nearly 100 miles of level land from the main channel in the last century. A floating log thrown up against the bank, a sunk boat, or any smallest obstruction, may cause the deposit of a mud island. Every such silt-bank gives a more or less new direction to the main channel, which in a few years may have eaten its way far across the plain, and dug out for itself a new bed at a distance of several miles. Unlike the Ganges and the Brahmaputra is not used for artificial irrigation. charged overflow annually replenishes the land. plains of Eastern Bengal watered by the Brahmaputra yield unfailing harvests of rice, mustard, oil-seeds, and the exhausting jute crop, year after year, without any deterioration. The valley of the Brahmaputra in Assam is not less fertile, although inhabited by a less industrious race. Indus, the putra as a The Brahmaputra is the great high-road of Eastern Bengal The and Assam. Its tributaries and bifurcations afford innumerable Brahmawaterways, almost superseding roads, and at the same time high-road. rendering road construction and maintenance very difficult. The main river is navigable by steamers as high up as DIBRUGARH, about 800 miles from the sea; and its broad surface is crowded with country craft of all sizes and rigs, from Brahmaputra traffic. The Gangetic river system. the dug-out canoe and timber raft to the huge cargo ship, with its high bow and carved stern, its bulged-out belly, and spreading square-sails. The busy emporium of SIRAJGANJ, on the western bank of the Brahmaputra, collects the produce of the Districts for transmission to Calcutta. Fifty thousand native craft, besides steamers, passed Sirájganj in 1876. The downward traffic consists chiefly of tea (to the value of about 1 million sterling), timber, caoutchouc, and raw cotton, from Assam; with jute, oil-seeds, tobacco, rice, and other grains, from Eastern Bengal. In return for these, Calcutta sends northwards by the Brahmaputra, European piece-goods, salt, and hardware; while Assam imports from the Bengal delta, by the same highway, large quantities of rice (amounting to 14,749 tons in 1883-84) for the labourers on the tea plantations. The total value of the river-borne trade of the Brahmaputra was returned at a little over three millions sterling in 1882-83. But it is impossible to ascertain the whole produce carried by the innumerable native boats on the Brahmaputra. The railway system of India taps the Brahmaputra at Goálanda and Dhubri; while a network of channels through the Sundarbans supply a cheaper means of water transit for bulky produce across the delta to Calcutta, As the Indus, with its feeder the Sutlej, and the Brahmaputra, convey to India the drainage from the northern or Tibetan slopes of the Himálayas, so the GANGES, with its tributary the Jumna, collects the rainfall from the southern or Indian slopes of the mountain wall, and pours it down upon the plains of Bengal. The Ganges traverses the central part of those plains, and occupies a more prominent place in the history of Indian civilisation than either the Indus in the extreme west, or the Brahmaputra in the extreme east of Hindustán. It passes its whole life to the south of the Himalayas, and for thousands of years has formed an overruling factor in the development of the Indian races. The Ganges issues, under the name of the Bhágírathi, from an ice-cave at the foot of a Himálayan snowbed, 13,800 feet above the sea-level (lat. 30° 56' 4" N., long. 79° 6' 40" E.). After a course of 1557 miles, it falls by a network of estuaries into the Bay of Bengal. It represents, with its tributaries, an enormous catchment basin, bounded on the north by a section of about 700 miles of the Himálayan ranges, on the south by the Vindhya mountains, and embracing 391,100 square miles. Before attempting a description of the functions performed by |