[36

INDIA

on its banks for miles above the bridges to keep the
current in a permanent channel.
Occasionally an accident directs the destinies of the
stream. A loop in the Indus was formed above Dera
[smail Khan some years ago, which, had it straightened
itself out, would have cut the station in two. Houses
were forsaken or sold for an old song, and it certainly
appeared as if the place was doomed. But a tree fell in,
up stream, some distance from the city, and the accumulation
 of drift sand and débris against the fallen tree
formed a natural abutment which shifted the corroding
current into a new direction, and saved the cantonment.
All the Punjab rivers east of the Indus, including the
Beas, open out into a wide network of channels on leaving
the hills, and maintain this formation to the end. In the
sarly dry months of summer these channels are frequently
nothing but wide white spaces of shimmering sand, with
here and there a narrow ribbon of gleaming water permeating
 the width of river bed, and offering no difficulty
to the passer by, except where the main channel, narrowed
to the dimension of a rivulet, may perchance present an
unfordable obstacle. Here the ferry is to be found, and
flat-bottomed boats of picturesque construction assist the
wayfarer. Crossing a Punjab river in the hot months,
when a furnace blast stirs up the sand and sends it
swirling across the river flats, is a dry and bitter experience.
 Crossing it when a wide torrent of rolling flood
sweeps southward, carrying on its crest destructive snags
and the circling evidences of dangerous eddies, is not so
anpleasant, but it is more risky.
The network of the Punjab waterways is completed
thus—the Beas joins the Sutlej near the historic field
of Sobraon; the Ravi (the river of Lahore) and the
Jehlam both join the Chenab, and the three together
unite with the Sutlej some 60 miles south of Multan
(the city of the Chenab), the whole system becoming
one with the Indus about 48 miles south of the
last junction. 1 have said that all the Punjab rivers
anst of the Indus flow in alluvial channels from the