210 The Flooding of the Indus. [No. 3. 



boats, and observed the harvest of drift wood, so abundant above, 

 tail away and disappear. Beyond this only a few straggling pieces 

 made their way. A slight rise, but insufficient to suggest anything 

 beyond the usual rains of the season, was observed between Esan- 

 kheyl and Dera Ismail Khan ; below that, nothing was noticed 

 unusual. The swelling of 1856 which at Attok we know did 

 not attain by 28£ feet the rise of the 10th August last, seri- 

 ously injured Leia, and almost washed Dera Gazee Khan away, 

 breaching an embankment which had been constructed above ; so 

 different are the effects after passing over a large extent of flat 

 country of the continuous swelling of the river and a flood which 

 alone attained a much greater height, but was transitory in its 

 nature. The same fact I observed in my enquiries about the flood 

 of 1841, which was also but Jittle regarded below Kallabagh. "With 

 reference to the running off, of the flood-water, it is difficult to 

 speak with much precision. There was a violent storm of rain 

 about Attok on the 7th August, and I know that storms in the 

 Himalayas are often very wide spread and extend far down into 

 the plains, not I mean exactly synchronously, but about the same 

 time a disturbance will be found to have occurred over a large tract, 

 in some parts snow, in others rain, and in others again wind and 

 dust. In the summer of 1855 I thus traced two storms by their 

 visible effects, and by enquiries from European Officers, the one 

 nearly north and south, and the other westward — the directions iu 

 which I happened to be travelling — and each for a distance of about 

 300 miles. 



It is possible then that the storm I speak of may have been a 

 portion of one which swelled the pent-up lake, and issued iu its 

 outburst, but whether this be the case or not, the probable occur- 

 rence of rain in the hills about the time of the flood makes it im- 

 possible to assign any correct date of its subsidence. 



The fall was at first slow, but the river was about 8 feet below its 

 maximum by sunset, during the 11th the water however continued 

 higher than the yearly flood ever attained to, and it was not till the 

 afternoon of that day, that the boatmen would venture to man a 

 boat to go down, alleging that all their usual land-marks were co- 

 vered, and that without them they dared not navigate the stream. 



