8
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INDIA

open course in a wide bed of alluvial soil for about 600
miles till the Sind frontier hills touch its western banks.
At this point the Indus has shifted as far west as is
possible under the conditions of the hill conformation
which there obtain, and it becomes confined to a more or
less permanent channel until it enters the great delta
south of Haidarabad.
The delta of the Indus is riddled with ancient
channels to the east of the position of the present main
stream, and it is almost within historic times that one of

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F1G. 41.—Indus Delta showing Ancient Channels of the Indus.

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these, the Puran, carried the main waters of the river to
the Rann of Kach, 70 miles to the east of its present
debouchment. Very interesting are certain local legends
that account for the rift in the beds of lime and conglomerate,
 the formation of which is said to have deflected
the Indus into its present channel from the ancient bed of
the Nara at Sukkur. ¢ Hakro,” says General Haig, “is a
name in modern times restricted to the lower part of what
has become a flood channel of the Indus, and is now
known as the Nara (officially, Eastern Nara), but it once
belonged to an entirely independent river of which the
Nara channel formed a part. The course of this river
may be traced throughout Sind, in the far north of which