OF CENTRAL AND EASTERN ASIA. 177 
part of the world. These are furnished by the very laudable 
efforts already alluded to, made by our countrymen in the East, 
to improve the geography of India, and the neighbouring re- 
gions, particularly by the recent mission to Caubul. A num- 
ber of leading points have thus been satisfactorily settled ; and 
the means are afforded of forming a comparative estimate be- 
tween Proremy’s information and that hitherto possessed by 
modern geographers. 
One of the leading questions in Indian geography, has al- 
ways been that relating to the course of the five great rivers 
that water the, Punjab. It was ascertained by the gentlemen 
attached to the Caubul mission, that these, after forming two 
great branches, at length united into one, and poured their 
waters into the. Indus by that common channel. They had 
uniformly been represented before as falling by two separate 
and somewhat distant channels. This is justly noticed by a 
learned writer in the Edinburgh Review, as one of the most 
important recent geographical. discoveries. It certainly was 
such to the moderns: but it merely restored the delineation 
which had been given, nearly two thousand years before, by 
Protemy. His map exhibits the five rivers, which, after torm- 
ing two great branches, unite and fall into the Indus, precisely. 
in the manner described by Mr Exrurnsrone. Purmy’s testi- 
mony is to the same effect; he describes the Hydaspes falling 
into the Indus, guatuor alios amnes afferentem. 
In endeavouring to prove the imperfection of Protemy’s 
knowledge relative to the north of India, M. Gossexin point- 
edly refers to his placing the source of the Ganges in the 
Imaus (Himalaya) instead of deriving it from Thibet. Here 
also, however, Protemy happens to be in the right. In 1808, 
the Supreme Government of Bengal, at the instance of the late. 
Colonel Cotzsrooxe, sent a mission to explore the origin of 
Vou. VIII. P. 1. Z this 
