2 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
now call Upper Sind a desert, and make Sibi, or some place 
thereabouts, the freshwater port of Central Asia. 
But up to the present the biped has the best of it, though the 
tension and vicissitudes of the struggle can only be appreciated by 
those who have been in it. On this head I need only sum up by 
saying that the Indus, in Upper Sind, flows down a channel in the 
centre of a ridge, which ridge itself runs down the left, or eastern 
side of a wide shallow trough, and is continually trying, like all 
waters flowing at an angle to the Equator in the northern hemisphere, 
to shift its channel to the right or western side. On the eastern 
side the pressure is less ; and the area below river level, population 
and cultivation are far inferior. But even here much land is lower 
than the flood level, and accordingly we have in Upper Sind two 
unequal populations dependent for their daily bread on getting 
a certain amount of Indus water,and for bare existence as terrestrial 
beings on keeping out the surplus. 
There are analogous cases in Holland, still more in Egypt and 
Lombardy; but these are small areas in comparison, and moreover 
are much more thickly-populated, so that they have stronger means 
of resistance to the powers of the waters. If the tremendous energy 
of the “ pax Britannica” is allowed to hold head against the Indus 
for a few more centuries, it may accumulate a population as numer- 
ous, and as well able to fight the river as those who dwell by the 
Nile or the Po. 
In the meanwhile a single campaign interrupting the engineers 
might at any time bring about the cataclysm. It is perhaps per- 
missible to conclude this sketch by observing that although the 
Sindi cultivator is very far below the Dutch peasant in every respect, 
he has no cause to envy the wretched labourers of Northern Italy, 
and still less so as regards the fellaheen of Heypt servi servorum. 
Of all agricultural classes in this presidency, the Sindi cultivators 
are the best fed and most independent. They get meat, most of 
them, once or more a week, plenty of good fish, which concerns our 
subject, and dairy produce. If they don’t like one landlord, as land is 
more abundant than hands, they can choose another at their plea- 
sure; their stature and bearing show all this, in Upper Sind at least. 
The human animal, at any rate, can thrive in the plain of the Indus, 
and if its climate is to strangers simply infernal, the natives are 
used to it, and know no better. In dealing with any other country 
these details would be irrelevant; but in Sind all animals, and 
