156 FLORA INDICA. 



siderable. The flora of the desert of Jesalmir resembles that 

 of the southern Panjab. 



16. Panjab. 



The Panjab extends from the northern border of Sindh and 

 Marwar, or rather Jesalmir, to the base of the Himalaya, and 

 from the mountains of Afghanistan, -which skirt the right 

 bank of the Indus, to the borders of the Gangetic plain. 

 Strictly speaking, the river Satlej, or Gharra, is the south- 

 eastern boundary of the Panjab, but politically the Cis- Satlej 

 states have been attached to it, and for our purposes it is con- 

 venient to draw the boundary along the line which separates 

 the waters tributary to the Ganges from those which flow to- 

 wards the Indus. This line lies to the eastward of the river 

 Gagar, whose channel may be traced by Bhatnir to the Satlej, 

 a little above Bahawalpur, though its waters are generally ab- 

 sorbed by the desert long before they reach that river. It 

 therefore includes Bahawalpur and Bhatiana, as well as the 

 Cis-Satlej states. 



The Panjab, as is well known, derives its name from the 

 five great tributaries of the Indus by which it is traversed. 

 These are the Jelam, the (yhenab, the Ravi, the Beas, and the 

 Satlej, all of which, uniting to form the Panjnad, join the 

 Indus near the southern extremity of the province. The sur- 

 face is on the whole level, but the north-western angle is more 

 or less diversified with hills. West of the Indus there is only 

 a narrow strip of level country, and here and there the hills 

 approach close to the river. No definite physical boundary can 

 therefore be laid down along this frontier, and the political 

 boundary must be adopted. Practically this is of no import- 

 ance, as the vegetation of the lower hills of Afghanistan is the 

 same as that of the western Panjab. 



Between the Indus and the Jelam an elevated platform of 

 considerable elevation (at Rawil Pindi 2000 feet) abuts upon 

 the Himalaya, and south of that town rises into a low range 

 of hiUs usually known as the salt range, the southern escarp- 



