Indusium

“ They are small neat cottages, and occupied by wandering tribes, who frequent the banks of the river till the season of inundation. Herodotus mentions that the Egyptians slept in turrets during the rise of the Nile. Effects of the Indus on the climate. The inhabitants have strange notions regarding the influence of the Indus on the climate. They believe that it gives out a perpetual breeze; and they, therefore, seek a habitation near it, for the heat of Sinde is most oppressive. ”

“ This civilization perished when the rain winds shifted to the southeast, but in its day it rivaled Mesopotamia itself.
By 8000 B.C. the slowly increasing aridity of the highland regions of central Asia began to drive the Andites to the river bottoms and the seashores. This increasing drought not only drove them to the valleys of the Nile, Euphrates, Indus, and Yellow rivers, but it produced a new development in Andite civilization. A new class of men, the traders, began to appear in large numbers. ”

“ As regards the physical peculiarities of that country, they are all to be found again on the Indus, with its affluents from{6} far inland Alps bringing down a periodical inundation, with its great delta spreading from Hyderabad, with its long course through a desert which affords it not a rivulet of increase: yet the peoples of the Indus have never thriven and waxed great like the Egyptians. ”

“ You proceed together with these rivers.
"The irresistible Indus proceeds straight, white and dazzling in splendour! She is great, and her waters fill all sides with mighty force. Of all the flowing rivers, none is flowing like her! She is wild like a mare, beautiful like a well-developed woman! "The Indus is ever young and beautiful. She is rich in horses, in chariots, and in garments; she is rich in gold and is beauteously clad! ”

“ Again this same river unites with the Hydraotes, and after absorbing this river, still retains its own name. After this the Acesines takes in the Hyphasis, and finally flows into the Indus under its own name; but after the junction it yields its name to the Indus. From this point I have no doubt that the Indus proceeds 100 stades, [3] and perhaps more, before it is divided so as to form the Delta ; and there it spreads out more like a lake than a river. ”

“ Close to its junction with the Indus, the ravine expanded into an open 179 plain, well covered with houses and enclosures, with scattered poplar and willow trees, as well as a few apricots, and traversed by canals of irrigation conducted from the little Giah rivulet. The Indus is here not more than forty feet wide, flowing swiftly over large boulders, and quite unfordable.
Throughout the whole course of this very remarkable gorge by which we descended from Giah, the rock continued to be conglomerate, alternating with strata of sandstone and of a very friable slate. ”

“ The Indus is brawling along five hundred feet below us, as if in a hurry to get "out of that;" and above, one's neck aches with trying to see to the top of the vast craggy mountains which confine the stream in its rocky channel. So wild, so heaven-forsaken a scene I never beheld; living nature there is none. ”

“ On the opposite side, the naked hill-sides rising in precipice after precipice are entirely barren of all vegetation. Waterworn into innumerable gullies and rock towers, they present a melancholy and arid appearance; and, although their summits are 12,000 feet above the Indus, they do not form a north side to this gorge in any way comparable with that on the south. The floor of the valley is filled with the debris of countless Himalayan deluges, yet the Indus looks like a small and dirty stream. To appreciate in any way the gigantic scale of the whole is quite impossible. ”

“ The following are statements about the river Indus which are quite unquestionable, and therefore let me record them. The Indus is the largest of all the rivers in Asia and Europe, except the Ganges, [1] which is also an Indian river. It takes its rise on this side mount Parapamisus, or Caucasus, and discharges its water into the Great Sea which lies near India in the direction of the south wind. ”

“ The Indus traverses, too, a comparatively barren and deserted country, thinly peopled and poorly cultivated; while the Ganges expends its waters in irrigation, and blesses the inhabitants of its banks with rich and exuberant crops. The Indus, even in the season of inundation, is confined to its bed by steeper and more consistent banks than the other river ”

“ The Indus falls into the Southern Sea, and empties itself by two mouths, encompassing the country called Patalene, which resembles the Delta of Egypt.
By the exhalation of vapours from such vast rivers, and by [Pg 81] the Etesian winds, India, as Eratosthenes affirms, is watered by summer rains, and the plains are overflowed. During the rainy season flax,331 millet, sesamum, rice, and bosmorum332 are sowed; and in the winter season, wheat, barley, pulse, and other esculent fruits of the earth with which we are not acquainted. ”

“ The water of the Indus is considered superior, for every purpose of life, to that drawn from the wells of Sinde. When taken from the river it is very foul; but the rich keep it till the mud with which it is loaded subsides. There are few ferry-boats on the Indus; and it is a curious sight to see the people crossing it on skins and bundles of reeds. A native will often float down to a distance of fifteen or twenty [65] miles, accompanied by a whole herd of buffaloes, preferring this mode of travelling to a journey on the banks. ”

“ The other two lying between the rivers Euphrates and Indus are scarcely worthy to be compared with India, if they were joined together. They say that India is bounded towards the east and the east wind as far as the south by the Great Sea, towards the north by mount Caucasus, as far as its junction with the Taurus; and that the river Indus cuts it off towards the west and the north-west wind, as far as the Great Sea. The greater part of it is a plain, which, as they conjecture, has been formed by the alluvial deposits of the rivers ”

“ The four streams or arms of the Indus which rise in the Himalayas, namely, the Jelum, the Chenāb, the Rāvee and the Sutlej, intersect the country, and, with the Indus, divide it into four Doabs or Provinces.
The first Doab ("country between two rivers") , lying between the Indus and the Jelum, is 147 miles in breadth; this Doab is intersected with defiles and mountain chains, and covered with thickets. It is the worst cultivated, the most barren and thinly peopled of all the Doabs. ”

“ Here we turned aside from the main valley. The contours of the mountains now become more rounded, the relative heights diminish, and the valleys are not so deeply excavated as on yesterday’s ride. The rivulet, which we follow up to its source in the main ridge, is the last connected with the system of the Indus, but still it is a child of the Indus, and carries to the sea news of this elevated region. Winter will soon chain up its waters, soon it will fall asleep in the cold and frost, until the sun calls it to life again in spring (Illustration 55) . ”

“ That such changes of river bed and channel should have occurred within a comparatively limited period of time is the less astonishing if we remember that the Indus, like many of the greatest rivers of the world, carries down sufficient detritus to raise its own bed above the general level of the surrounding plains in an appreciable and measurable degree. ”

“ In these facts, we have additional proof of the greater bulk of the Indus, as compared with the Ganges; when at the lowest, it retains a velocity of two and a half miles, with a medial depth of fifteen feet, and though running on as great, if not a greater slope than that river, never empties itself in an equal degree, though much more straight in its course. ”

“ The scenery of the shores of the Indus changed its character with each succeeding day; its devious waters bathed, in their progress, the trackless deserts of Sivii, whose burning winds are never refreshed by the dews of happier regions; or fertilized the mango-groves of the Moultan; or poured through the wild unprofitable jungle, glittering amidst its long and verdant tresses, which so often shelter the wary tiger, or give asylum to the wild boar, when pursued to its entangled grass by the spear of the Indian huntsman. ”

“ Crossing the Indus, Fa Hian came to Wuchung, which is identified with Udyana, or Upper Swat, and there he remained during the rains. The Indus below the Darel junction is confined within a narrow steep-sided gorge with hills running high on either side, those on the east approaching 15,000 and 16,000 feet. There are villages, groups of flat-roofed shanties, clinging like limpets to the rocks, but there is little space for cultivation, and no record of Buddhist remains north of Buner. ”

“ The Edomites, though descended from the stock of Abraham, adopted the idolatry of the Canaanites, with whom they had intermarried. But [46] their most remarkable feature, as a nation, was that of dwelling in caves. The mountains of Idumea are of soft sandstone, easily wrought, and are penetrated with caves and grottoes, which were used, not like those of other nations, for burial places, but for residence. The rock-hewn temples, palaces and homes of Petra, so well known to travelers, are magnificent in appearance. ”

“ As might be expected, we have in the Rig-Veda frequent allusions to the Indus and its five tributaries, especially in the seventy-fifth hymn of the tenth book, which we translate in full:—
"O ye streams! The bard celebrates your excellent prowess in the house of the worshipper. They flow in three systems, seven streams in each system. The prowess of the Indus is superior to that of all others.
"O Indus! when you ran towards land rich in food, Varuna opened out the way for you. You flow over a spacious path on the land. You shine above all flowing rivers. ”

“ The voyage of Nearchos from Alexander’s Haven to the Mouth of the Arabios (Append. Note F) .
Our author could scarcely have chosen for his subject one that is more beset with problems of aggravating perplexity. The Indus is notable even among Indian rivers for the frequency, and sometimes also for the suddenness, with which it changes its courses. As Colonel Holdich [xvii] well observes, “The difficulty of restoring to the map of India an outline of the ancient geography of Sindh and the Indus Delta is one which has baffled many generations of scholars. ”

“ It is certain that the dwellers in that vast alluvial plain were compelled by the very nature of the soil to use clay for many purposes to which no other civilization has put it. In Mesopotamia, as in the valley of the Nile, the inhabitants had but to stoop to pick up an excellent modelling clay, fine in texture and close grained—a clay which had been detached from the mountain sides by the two great rivers, and deposited in inexhaustible quantities over the whole width of the double valley. ”

“ From the mountainous tract of Ida near these places, two arms, he says, extend to the sea, one in the direction of Rhœteium, the other of Sigeium, forming a semicircle, and terminate in the plain at the same distance from the sea as the present Ilium, which is situated between the extremities of the above-mentioned arms, whereas the ancient Ilium was situated at their commencement. This space comprises the Simoïsian plain through which the Simoeis runs, and the Scamandrian plain, watered by the Scamander. ”

“ Jerome describes Idumaea as extending from Beit Jibrin to Petra, and ascribes the great caves at the former place to cave-dwellers like the aboriginal Horites. Ptolemy’s account presents us with the last stage, in which the name Idumaea is entirely restricted to the cis-Jordanic district, and the old trans-Jordanic region is absorbed in Arabia. ”

“ The Indus valley would offer to the military explorers from the West the first taste of the quality of the climate of the India of the plains which they would encounter. The Indus valley in the hot weather would possess little climatic attraction for the Western highlander. Alexander's troops mutinied when they got far beyond the Indus. Any other troops would mutiny under such conditions as governed their outfit and their march. It is more than possible that the great Assyrian conqueror before him encountered much the same difficulty. ”

“ To the vast mound of Babel succeed long undulating heaps of earth, bricks, and pottery. A solitary mass of brickwork, rising from the summit of the largest mound, marks the remains known to the Arabs as the “Mujelibé,” or the “overturned.” [192]
Other shapeless heaps of rubbish cover for many an acre the face of the land. On all sides, fragments of glass, marble, pottery, and inscribed brick are mingled with that peculiar nitrous and blanched soil, which, bred from the remains of ancient habitations, checks or destroys vegetation, and renders the site of Babylon a naked and hideous waste. ”

“ For chancing to lift my eyes to one of the houses that be here builded by the water's edge, and serve doubtless for the storage of marine stores and tackle, I saw a man, and after, another, and then a whole posse of men armed with cuirass and halberd, that advanced directly towards us. Idonia saw them almost at the same moment, and seeming to recover her wits in the suddenness of the danger, she broke off, and turned to me with a swift glance of inquiry. ”

“ Dashing its way through the most formidable barriers, it is entirely unlike the gentle Ganges, which pursues its tranquil course through the plains, meeting no barrier in its entire length. The Indus, so long as it remains north of the Himalaya, traverses a plateau 10,000 feet above the sea; while the Ganges, even at Delhi, is but 1000 feet above the sea. ”