108 The Ancient Canals in the Delhi Territory. (Marcu, 
as far as it would go, and such an unincumbered stream would by being 
in constant action prevent the accumulation of impediments in the river 
bed, which, under the system of damming, have eight months of each year 
to accumulate, and in a country liable to drift sand, any vegetation in 
the bed is sufficient to collect and stop it, and form banks, which 
from the effect of the next rains is spread and deposited in hollows, 
gradually raising the bottum, and thereby widening the water way, and 
diminishing its power of sweeping clean the channel—an operation which 
with an open river would have been constantly going on, as no particle 
of water passes onwards without moving somewhat nearer to its final’ 
receptacle some portion of the river silt. In the Ghaghar, the outlet 
no longer existing, the operation is that of a gradual filling up from 
the tail of the river upwards, and the consequent shortening of the point 
to which water reaches from its source. At present the stream in the 
dry weather reaches to Dindhal, and it is only in the rains that any 
portion of water reaches our provinces when heavy floods sweep along the. 
bed of the Ghaghar, sometimes as far as Bhatnir, and convert all the 
hollows into lakes, which are gradually shoaling, by the amount of silt 
in the water filled into them. The bed of the river, thus saturated and 
aided by irrigation from the patches of water, yields the most splendid 
crops of wheat in the neighbourhood of Rdneah (a space several miles 
wide)—a benefit our landholders must lose as the river retrogrades, 
but which might be much extended, as was shown the year we occupied 
the Bhatté country, when, a number of the lower dams being cut, the 
floods of the rains reached and passed Radneah in abundance, where 
they had hardly been for years previously. The most beneficial effect 
of insisting on aright to a share of the waters which do not rise in, but 
only pass through, the Sikh states, would be in affording a sufficient 
supply of water for the nala or canal from the Ghaghar, at Minok, 
into it again near Raneah. The general line of it is shown on the map 
passing by Fattehdbad, and being in a great measure within our frontier, 
it would be an extension of the benefits of irrigation from the Ghaghar 
to our own subjects, who now derive so little from the vicinity of what 
the acts of our neighbours make but a nominal river nearly. This old 
water-course is well defined at its head, and so far open that, in the 
rains, the freshes send down a supply of water for the rice cultivation 
near Fattehabdd. Feroz Suan is said to have made a canal from the 
Ghaghar, and it is possible that this is the channel alluded to. The ad- 
vantages of its being re-opened (only however after the Ghaghar river 
shall have been cleared of dams, for at least 100 miles up) should not 
be lost sight of. The only thing further I have to say on the canal of 
