178 ON THE ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY 



this celebrated stream. The party followed its course till it 

 became little more than a rivulet. Their further progress was 

 arrested by precipices, and by the snows, under which its in- 

 fant course was buried. But they made such observations, 

 and collected such intelligence, as left no room whatever to 

 doubt that it descends from the Himalaya, and that the long 

 course which our maps assign to it along the table land of Thi- 

 bet, has no existence in fact. They found also, that, contrary 

 to general opinion, the sources of the Jumna, and of the Sa- 

 rayu, the head of the Gogra, were in the same chain, and at a 

 small distance from that of the Ganges ; as they had been pla- 

 ced by Ptolemy, who has not, indeed, been so happy as the 

 moderns, or, indeed, as Pliny has been, in delineating some 

 parts of their subsequent course. 



The gentlemen employed in the Caubul mission, extending 

 their researches to the north-west of India, have brought to 

 light some other important features. One of the most promi- 

 nent is the river Kaumah or Kama, which rising on the oppo- 

 site side of the same range which gives origin to the Oxus, 

 pursues a northerly course of nearly four hundred miles, till it 

 falls into the Indus, of which it forms the largest western tri- 

 butary. Near its junction it receives the river of Suaut, so 

 called from a beautiful and fertile valley through which it 

 winds. Of these streams, previous to the mission, no trace ap- 

 peared in our modern maps ; but in turning to Ptolemy, we 

 shall find them both delineated, under the appellations of the 

 Coe and the Suastes, with some variation as to magnitude, but 

 correctly as to relative position and mode of junction ; while 

 the river of Caubul is noted as a branch from Parapomisus. It 

 thus appears, that Ptolemy's knowledge of the northern boun- 

 dary of India, though not perfect, was, on the whole, decidedly 

 superior to that of the best informed modern geographers ; and 



we 



