334 R. D. Oldliam — On prohahle Changes in the Geogra;phy [No. 4, 



urged against it by the writer just referred to, and again by Mr. Wilson 

 in his final report on the settlement of the Sirsa district, viz., that the 

 Hakra is not large enough to have carried the waters of the Sutlej. I 

 will quote Mr. Wilson's own words : " The Sotar is a well-defined valley, 

 varying in width from three to six miles, of no great depth, and 

 usually quite level from side to side, but distinctly marked off from 

 the light-coloured loamy soil of the plain through which it passes by 

 a clearly defined bank or sand-ridge on either side, and still more by 

 its dark rich clay soil free from admixture of sand and producing a 

 vegetation different in character from that of the surrounding country." 

 * * ♦ " From the appearance of the Sotar valley and the numerous 

 remains of towns and villages which stud its banks all the way to 

 Bhawalpur,* it is evident that at one time it conveyed a much larger 

 volume of water than at present, and probably was the channel of a 

 perennial stream. But though it must have been, as it is now, the 

 largest and most important of all the drainage channels between the 

 Sutlej and the Jumna, it can never have carried a river at all approach- 

 ing in size to either of these two. The valley is too shallow and shews 

 too few marks of violent flood action for this to have been the case ; 

 and there is none of the river sand which would certainly have been 

 left by such a stream. The soil is all rich alluvial clay, such as is now 

 being annually deposited in the depressions which are specimens of 

 those numerous pools which have given the Saraswati its name, ' The 

 river of Pools ' ; and there seems little doubt that the same action 

 as now goes on, has been going on for centuries, and that the numerous 

 m.ountain torrents of the Indo- Ganges watershed, fed, not by the 

 snows but by the rainfall of the Sub-Himalayan ranges, wandering 

 over the prairie in many shallow channels, joined in the Sotra or 

 Hakra valley and formed a considerable stream, at first perhaps peren- 

 nial but afterwards becoming absorbed after a gradually shortening 

 course, as the rainfall decreased over the lower Himalayan slopes, and 

 as the spread of irrigation in the submontane tract intercepted more 

 and more of the annual floods ; and the comparatively feeble stream, 

 cutting away all the prominency in its bed, deposited the silt in the 

 depressions, and gradually filled its valley with a level layer of rich 

 hard clay. The same process appears to be still going on, and the bed 

 of the stream is gradually attaining one uniform slope throughout. "f 



* Mr. Wilson had traced its com'se ontside the Sirsa district on native author- 

 ity into the Gar rah near Bhawalpur. Actual survey has shewn that this informa- 

 tion was erroneous. 



f Final report of the Revision of the Settlement of the Sirsa District in the Pun- 

 jal, by J. Wilson, Settlement Officer, Calcutta, 1884. 



