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



been the deposits of the summer high water, or they may have been the 

 residue of 1833, or of another local flood. It seems certain that 

 an inundation of the Shayok did occur in A. D. 1833 ; it is corro- 

 borated by the information I have received in Cashmere ; and as 

 every one knows what pains is required to prevent a confusion of 

 dates and occurrences in any account given by an Asiatic, and how 

 difficult it is to keep them to one precise clear account, it is not 

 improbable that the calamity of 1833 was referred to in the testi- 

 mony of the inhabitants of Chulung, Tertse, &c, whose Tibetan 

 language would require an interpreter, and who must have been 

 ignorant of the flood of 1841, if it took place at any distance below 

 their villages. 



In reading Captain Cunningham's account, I am impressed with 

 the idea that a conclusion was at once drawn that the origin of all 

 the cataclysms of the Indus was from one cause, and at one and the 

 same point, high up among the glaciers of a tributary stream where 

 the waters are chiefly generated by the snows. 



In my letter of 29th March, I stated that this opinion was not 

 borne out by native statements, and since I have extended my enqui- 

 ries, I am the more convinced that the great flood of 1841 occurred 

 about 400 miles below the site specified by Captain Cunningham, * 

 and was caused by the arrest of the main Indus, across which a moun- 

 tain called Ultoo Kunn subsided at a narrow place about five cose 

 south of " Ghor," two or three coss above Tuleycha, and four or five 

 coss below the Fort of " Boonjee" (in the district of Astor or Hussoora, 

 where the Maha Eaja of Cashmere has a garrison). 



Boota Khan, a man of Ghor, in the service of the Raja of Nuggur, 

 now in Cashmere gives the most exact account, and declares that he 

 saw the actual dam ; that some men of his village chanced to be 

 washing in the river for gold, and were buried by the fall of the soft 

 soiled mountain, which he attributes to an earthquake. He also saw 

 the spot after the waters had forced their way. 



I directed Meerza Syfodeen, the Cashmere newswriter to refer to 

 the reports of that time written by his father, Meerza Ahud, to Sir 

 George Clerk at Umballa ; and those of April and June 1841, before 



* As near " Sasscrh." 



