426 DENUDATION. 



have but to point to the work done by these torrents, 

 to prove that it must have taken ages to perform it, 

 how many ages it is unfortunately beyond our powers 

 to determine. A little observation will teach us that 

 rapidly running water can cut very quickly through a 

 soft, or friable medium, as the injuries done to mountain 

 roads by sudden storms sufficiently prove; at these 

 times the whole surfaces of such roads are sometimes 

 carried away in a few hours for considerable distances, 

 so that their course is more or less completely effaced. 

 But when it comes to the question of wearing channels 

 through the solid rock, it must be obvious that it 

 wears a very different aspect and must have occupied 

 a long period of time. Now near Iskardoh in Little 

 Thibet, not far from the sources of the Indus, "is the 

 wonderful gorge by which the river bursts through 

 the western ranges of the Himalayas, said to \>z fourteen 

 thousand feet deep" (or almost i-J miles in vertical depth).* 

 How long did it take to cut that? 



The River Indus rises approximately in Lat. 320 N., 

 and Long. 810 E., in a lofty mountainous region, 

 seldom visited by Europeans, and of which very little 

 is known ; exact data as to its head waters are there- 

 fore not available. Enough however is known to show 

 that the great river has eaten its way literally for hun- 

 dreds of miles through rock-bound gorges whose beetling 

 cliffs form a strategic line upon the N.W. frontier 

 of our Indian Empire of enormous strength and import- 

 ance from a military point ot view, f The crossing of 

 the Upper Indus there is only fairly practicable for 



* Encycl. Brit., gth Edition. Vol. x., p. 68. (Article "The River Indus.") 

 "j~ See letter of General Sir John Adye in The Times of August 

 *7 J 893- (He says it is "almost impregnable"). 



