1859.] The Flooding of the Indus. 201 



marked so far west as the River of Grilgit* nor are the mountains 

 from which it comes so high or so snow-clad as those to the east- 

 ward. Indeed I do not know in any part of the Himalayas a 

 region so likely to give birth to catastrophes of the kind as that 

 around the upper part of the Shayok. 



The solution of the point is, however, very easy. The whole 

 Indus above the Gilgit river is open to travellers proceeding under 

 the protection of the Maharaja of Cashmere, and any officer start- 

 ing from that valley and striking the Indus at the foot of the 

 Nunga, Purbut, (a route which I recollect an officer of the artillery 

 following in the summer of 1855,) and thence marching upwards, 

 would very soon ascertain positively the exact locality of the ob- 

 struction. I should be glad if opportunity offered to proceed thither 

 for the purpose, and regret that when in that country before, I 

 gave less attention to the matter than I should have done had I 

 thought that a flood like that of 1841, could by any chance occur 

 again in any definite number of years. 



The second point mooted is the nature of the obstacle. We 

 may pronounce with almost certainty that this was the sudden irrup- 

 tion into a comparatively narrow valley of an immense fragment of a 

 glacier. I have already alluded to the glaciers of the region where 

 I suppose the obstruction to have taken place. I have never seen 

 those of Switzerland, but from what I have heard of them I think 

 that the ones now referred to differ from the character ordinarily 

 assigned to those in Europe, as they certainly greatly excel the lat- 

 ter in magnitude. Yet even in Europe a catastrophe similar to those 

 which have taken place in the Indus valley occurred in that of the 

 Drance in 1818. When crossing from the Nubra to the Shayok 

 valley in August 1855, my companion, who had been in Switzerland, 

 would at first hardly admit that the enormous mass of earth, rock 

 and ice commingled and agglomerated together, with a broad 

 stream of the dirtiest brown water issuing from its foot, and which 

 I pointed out, filling up a tributary valley on our left, w r as really a 

 glacier; and several hundred miles farther south crossing the great 

 shed between the Lanskar and the Cheuab, he pointed out the fea- 

 tures he had been accustomed to see, and which we generally find 



* There are however glaciers in every direction and some remarkable ones. Eds. 



2 F 



