20G The Flooding of the Indus. [No. 3. 



deserves such a name, is too wild a supposition to be seriously 

 advanced, and is not the least borne out by the extent and nature 

 of the flood ; while, as insisted, the feeders which run through the 

 tract where glaciers are common are too insignificant to affect the 

 Indus at Attok. 



The fifth and sixth points enumerated, the height to which 

 the waters rose at the obstruction, and the distance to which the 

 stream was dammed back, are of course far beyond our ken, when 

 the very location of the obstruction itself is indeterminate to a dis- 

 tance of about 300 miles, nor can they be ascertained in any other 

 way than by actual inspection ; for though a very rough approxima- 

 tion might be made to the quantity of water discharged, the high 

 valleys vary so much in breadth and in longitudinal slope that the 

 question would still remain undecided ; early inspection will settle 

 the point, and that alone will. 



The velocity with which the flood water came down was very 

 different at different points of the course, being in the general 

 greatest at the first, and diminishing as the slope of the bed 

 decreased. Prom Attok to Kallabagh the velocity was fifteen miles 

 per hour, the fall of the bed being about two and a half feet per 

 mile ; and this leads me to note that the velocity of the prior flood 

 appears to me to have been under-estimated in an account I have 

 seen (prepared I think by Colonel Cunningham). It is there 

 stated that the flood water passed a village on the upper Shayok 

 valley at 2 p. m. and that it reached Torbela at the same hour just 

 two days after. From this a velocity of between eleven and twelve 

 miles is deduced. 



I should rather be disposed to think that only one day elapsed, and 

 that the velocity attained to nearly twenty-three miles per hour, 

 but for one consideration, which is this. The water certainly reach- 

 ed Attok a little before sunset, say about 6 p. m. and from Attok 

 to Torbela is forty miles. This would give therefore, if the hour at 

 Torbela be correct, a velocity of but ten miles per hour. I should 

 expect, from the river here debouching out of the hills upon the 

 Chuch plain, a great diminution of velocity between Torbela and 

 Attok, (to be to some extent recovered below Attok), but not such a 

 falling off as this ; aud therefore I think it probable that the time at 



