1848.] The Battle Field of Alexander and Porus. 631 



castle itself and its basement rock. The ruined castle of the Maha 

 Bunn appears to have been sited upon a square, rock some 50 or 60 feet 

 high, springing from the table summit, scarped to eastward with tre- 

 mendous precipices, having a ravine to the north and an inferior 

 mound beyond it, and being protected on the other quarters by its own 

 precipitous sides. 



Bearing in mind that the Macedonians, themselves mountaineers, 

 were fresh from the conquest of a land abounding in the loftiest and 

 most rugged mountains, and from the storm of several mountain strong- 

 holds, I should hesitate to allow that they could have mistaken a hill 

 of one thousand feet, for a mountain of four thousand. The Maha 

 Bunn, by a rude triangulation of bearings, and a ruder observation 

 with the sextant, I made upwards of 5,000 feet higher than the river 

 at its base. Arrian reckons the height of Aornos at 1 1 stadia or 4125 

 feet above the plain. And this altitude, if measured at all, must have 

 been computed by means of instruments far ruder than mine. The 

 great and pre-eminent attitude of the mountain is all we can elicit from 

 the reading. There is no mountain comparable with the Maha Bunn 

 upon the right bank of the Indus within twenty miles farther north, a 

 distance too great for the circumstances narrated. Opposite Maha Bunn, 

 and across the Indus, is a rocky curb to the valley, called Durbund, the 

 only site in this neighbourhood to which I have ever heard the name 

 of Alexander attached. The attack upon Aornos appears to me to 

 have occurred in April or May ; for the passage of the Hydaspes was 

 effected in July and from Aornos to the Hydaspes, are about 20 short 

 marches. Owing to the great heat of the plains, the Maha Bunn, 

 retains its snow only one third of the period usual to mountains of 

 similar altitude, distant from the plains. By the end of March or 

 earlier the snow is melted from its summit. 



Capt. Cunningham's identification of the Dumtour district with the 

 Urasa of Indian history is the more happy, that he does not seem to 

 have been aware, that it still retains the name Aorush. But he would 

 probably not have supposed it the Varsa Regio of Pliny, bad he been 

 aware that the huge table mountain of sandstone upon the right bank 

 of the Hydaspes about 35 miles above Dhangulli is to this day called 

 Nurr Varsova, a name which at once arrests the attention by its iden- 

 tity with that of the Polish capital. The Sutti however of this Var- 



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