280 THE COLONIES OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE. 



But if the mountains of India are wonderful, not less so are the 

 rivers 



" The Indus is seventeen hundred miles long,, and for the distance of 

 seven hundred and eighty miles there is sufficient water to sail two hun- 

 dred ton vessel, and in some places it is from four to nine miles wide. 

 The waters of the Indus enter the Arabian gulf in two great branches, 

 forming a rich delta of alluvial land, one hundred and twenty-five miles wide 

 at the base, and eighty in length, from thence to the point wherethey sepa- 

 rate about six miles below Tatta. From the sea to Lahore there is an unin- 

 terrupted navigation (for fleets of vessels) of one thousand miles British. At 

 seventy-five miles from the sea the tides are scarcely perceptible, and at full 

 moon the rise at the mouths is about nine feet : there are no rocks or rapids 

 to obstruct the ascent, and the current does not exceed two miles and a half 

 an hour; when joined by the Punjaub it never shallows in the dryest sea- 

 son to less than fifteen feet, the breadth being half a mile ; the Chenab or 

 Azesines has a minima of twelve feet, and the Ravee or Hydrastasis is 

 about half the size of the latter : the usual depth of the three rivers can- 

 not be rated at less than four, three, and two fathoms. Lieut. Burnes 

 found the river Indus at Tatta (Lat. 24deg. 44min. N.Long. 68 deg. 17min. 

 E.) to have a breadth of six hundred and seventy yards, and to be running 

 with a velocity of two miles and a half an hour, sounding fifteen feet: these 

 data give one hundred and ten thousand five hundred cubic feet per second, 

 but estimated in April so low as eighty thousand cubic feet of water per 

 second ; it exceeds by four times the size of the Ganges in the dry season, 

 and nearly equals the Mississippi. The much greater length of course in 

 the Indus, its tortuous direction and numerous tributaries among towering 

 and snowy mountains (the Sutelj rises in lake Manosawvara in Thibet, 

 seventeen thousand feet above the sea) leads to such a result. The slope 

 on which the Indus descends to the ocean is gentle, the average rate of 

 current being two and a half miles an hour, while the Punjaub rivers na- 

 vigated on the journey to Lahore were one mile in excess of the Indus. 

 While the Ganges and its subsidiaries take their origin from the S. face of 

 the Himalaya, the Indus receives the torrents of either side of that massy 

 and snow-girt chain swollen by the showers of Caubul and the rains and 

 ice of Chinese Tartary. Doubtless the Indus owes its magnitude to the 

 melted snows and ice of the Himalaya's crested summits. The Ganges is 

 fifteen hundred miles long, and at five hundred miles from the sea, the 

 channel is thirty feet deep when the river is at its lowest during the dry 

 season, and its width makes it appear an inland sea. This magnificent 

 river, like its compeer, rises amidst the perpetual snows of the Himalaya, 

 in the 31 deg. of N. Lat. fourteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, ! 

 The arch from beneath which it issues is three hundred feet high, com- 

 posed of deep frozen layers of snow probably the accumulation of ages 

 surrounded by hoary icicles of gigantic magnitude. From Calcutta to 

 Allahabad the distance on the Ganges through the Sunderbunds is one 

 thousand miles, and thither the steam ship Hooghly lately made three 

 trips ; the height of the river at Allahabad above the level of the sea is 

 three hundred and forty-eight feet, and the maximum and minimum known 

 rise is forty-five and thirty-four feet. There are other rivers, such as the 

 Brahmaputra (which in some parts is from /bur to six miles wide ! ) Sutleje 

 (which is nine hundred miles long before its junction with the Indus) Jumna, 

 Jhylum, &c., which would be considered vast rivers in Europe. 



The length of course of some of the principal rivers to the sea, is in 

 English miles Indus 1,700; Sutlej (to Indus 900) 1,400; Ganges 1,500; 

 Jhylum (ditto 750) 1, C 250; Jumna (to Ganges 780) 1500; Gunduck (to 

 Ganges 450) 980. In the Deccan and South of India, Godavery so the sea 



