1S60.] Memorandum on the great flood of the river Indus. 131 



Indus must be above seven miles an hour in ordinary times, and of 

 course much greater during a flood, so it may, I think, be fairly 

 concluded that the flood would take only about twenty-one hours in 

 traversing the two hundred and twenty miles, and that it passed 

 Boonjee on the 9th August, 185S, about 10 a. m. If so it travelled 

 at the rate of ten and half miles per hour, by no means an impro- 

 bable rate* as the Ganges when it issues from the hills opposite 

 Hurdwar is stated by the Canal officers to flow in ordinary times at 

 nine miles an hour, and its pace looks slow compared with that of 

 the Jhelum below Baramoola. 



As soon as I got the report from Boonjee I sent for further 

 information but could only make out that the flood was understood to 

 come from Naggar, an independent district which the Maharajah's 

 people called a part of Yaghistan ! quite inaccessible to ordinary 

 messengers. Nothing would induce a man to go there ; and the Wazeer 

 said that when a present was offered, the man took the money, but 

 only went a short distance and returned after a time with a made- 

 up-story. 



Though repeated enquiries were made, nothing further was elicited. 



Indeed beyond the fact that the flood had come from the Gilgit 

 river, as reported by natives and as shewn by its carrying away 

 the well known gateway of the Numbul Fort, nothing positive was 

 known as to the cause of the flood or of the exact site of the place 

 dammed up, though the Boonjee sepoys believed that it came from 

 the Naggar valley which is drained by an Eastern tributary of the 

 Gilgit river. 



"Whether the flood in question came from Naggar or not, I feel 

 quite certain that it did not come from above Skardo. At the 

 time of the flood two of my assistants were working round Skardo, 

 and another was working on the Shayok river within a month after- 

 wards. I asked them to make particular enquiries, but they heard 

 nothing of a large flood from any of the inhabitants of those parts. 



- * A table taken from the Philosophical transactions gives 4S0 feet in one 

 minute or nearly five and a half miles an hour as the velocity of absolute torrents 

 with an inclination of only 3 feet 1.27 inches per mile. The table gives no 

 greater inclinations. 



