44 



THE PUNJAUB AND ITS PEOPLE. 
(ILLustRATED BY THE LanTERN.) 
By Dr. J. STEPHENSON, M.D. 7th March, 1905. 
Dr. Stephenson warned his audience that in writing his lecture, 
he had not set out to give instruction, but to interest them. 
He prefaced his remarks on the Punjaub by stating that that 
province must not be considered as representative of India. The 
Punjaub was 550 miles long and its extreme breadth about 600 
miles, and had an area of 150,000 square miles or was not far 
from three times as large as England and Wales. It was mostly 
a flat plain. One could go hundreds of miles without meeting 
with any elevation whatever. The mountains to the north and 
north-west, the chain of the Himalayas were the province’s most 
priceless possession, for without the melting snows there would 
be no rivers and without its rivers there would be no Punjaub as 
they knew it. The province got its name from its fine rivers, 
Punjaub in Persian being the land of the five waters. The rivers 
began to rise perceptibly about April, and in July or perhaps 
August the floods were at their highest. Then on the Indus it 
took from nine to thirteen hours to get ferried across and the 
land was often out of sight. In the cold weather on the other 
hand the river itself was difficult to find in the wastes of sand. 
Irrigation by canals had worked miracles for the land. Where 
there had been uncultivated tracts before or the natives took 
advantage of the scanty rains to snatch sparse crops, two crops 
a year were now regularly raised. New villages had sprung up 
at every mile as if by magic, Barren land belonged to the 
Government and when apportioned out was given away, the 
settlers having to pay only for the water supplied. The great 
feature of the climate was the difference in temperature between 
