1S60.] Memorandum on the great flood of tlie river Indus. 133 



5th. "What means are the most available for ascertaining the oc- 

 currence of such a calamity in future ? 



1st. There is no report prevalent in the Maharajah's territories as 

 to any portion of the river Indus or its tributaries being dammed up. 



2nd. In my opinion the late cataclysm of August 1858 was gene- 

 rated in the Naggar valley on a tributary of the Gilgit river, see 

 accompanying Memorandum on the flood of 1858. 



3rd. I do not think such accidents are likely to be confined to 

 one locality only. On the contrary, I think they may occur in a 

 great many places both on the main Indus and on its tributaries. 

 The main river would not, however, be likely to submit to any ob- 

 struction so long as the tributaries would. 



4th. I have made enquiries about the flood or cataclysm of 1841, 

 as far as I have heard at present I am inclined to think that it did 

 not arise in the Shayok river. The Khapalu Rajah Mahomed Ali 

 Khan says in a letter of July 1859, that the last great flood on the 

 Shayok river took place about twenty-four years ago, that is in 1835, 

 but that he was a small boy at the time and did not remember it 

 well. His district suffered very much during the flood and had it 

 occurred in 1841 he would have remembered all the circumstances. 

 I have again addressed the Rajah on the subject and have asked for 

 more precise dates. 



Again I think, on examining the existing maps of the Upper 

 Indus, that it is highly improbable that the damming up of 

 the head of the Shayok river* would make the Indus look smaller 

 at Attok than it otherwise would be. Had the whole of the 

 Shayok river been stopped, the Indus at Attok might have looked 

 smaller than usual but not so for less than a tenth part. And this 

 applies both to the flood of 1841 and 1858, if on the latter occasion 

 the river really was much lower than it would have been had there 

 been no flood — I am of opinion that if the water that falls into the 

 Shayok above Sassar-j- never fell into it again, no one would ever notice 

 the loss at Attok. 



* At a point not more than forty miles below its sources. 

 f The point where the cataclysm of 1841 was said by some to have been 

 generated. 



