626 The Battle Field of Alexander and Porus. [Dec. 



two successive days, from daybreak until evening, I was wading through 

 the crystal waters of the Hydaspes and sketching the topography 

 of the Battle Field. For it happens that the boundary of the Sikh 

 and mountain kingdoms meet upon this most interesting line, and the 

 inhabitants are either side have inherited all the rancour which ani- 

 mated the combatants here in Alexander's day : so that every island 

 is contested, and an accurate plan was essential to enable me to adjudi- 

 cate the claims. 



The scene itself is quite w T orthy of the stirring memories with which 

 it is associated. The Hydaspes, bursting from the mountains, sweeps 

 around the castle- crowned cliff of Mungla : and exulting in its escape 

 from the prison of the rock, spreads wide its waters over the fertile 

 valley, forming some fifty smiling islands, cultivated and often inha- 

 bited. Its waters gushing over a bed of white Quartz Boulders, 

 form by turns, rapid, pool and shallow, each of which has its own 

 peculiar and lovely tint. The shallows ripple in the most liquid of 

 azure, the rapids pass into a delicate crysolite, as they hurry together, 

 entangling the eye and the heart in their ceaseless whirl : the pools 

 engulph those glad dancing waters without addition to their stilly 

 depths, without alleviation to their sombre blue by accession of those 

 sparklers of the deep. 



As we gaze up the glittering, living pavement of crysolite and sap- 

 phire, fringed on either hand by the lively green of the willow, other 

 hues are brought into direct contrast with our foreground. The dis- 

 tant greens of the graceful Beere and Seesoo, clumped over the Field 

 of Battle, the purple of the successive ranges of mountains of Jup- 

 pall, and the mighty barrier snow-clad from base to summit, which 

 walls in the loveliest and most unblest of valleys, itself relieved upon 

 the bosom of the azure sky. To Alexander, first arrived from the 

 wretched, ravine-worn waste of Potowar, the scene must have offered 

 happy promise of the land he so coveted to possess. I describe it, as 

 it appears in the winter. At other seasons, but one channel can be 

 forded by the elephant. 



To this description I may add, that the Taxiles of the Historian 

 is without doubt the Tarkhaili clan,* still inheriting a portion of their 



* The personal name of Taxiles was Oomphis. Taxiles was the family name. 

 Khaun i Zemaun Khaun is the present head of the house, to which I lately was 

 permitted to restore their ancestral possessions. 



