CHAP. XV - SCINDE

Summary

Near Mithun Kote, we steamed suddenly into the main stream of the Indus, the bed of which is here a mile and a quarter wide. Although the river at the time of my visit was rising fast, it was far from being at its greatest height. In January, it brings down but forty thousand cubic feet of water every second, but in August it pours down four hundred and fifty thousand. The river-bed is rarely covered with running water, but the stream cuts a channel for itself upon one shore, and flows in a current of eight or nine miles an hour, while the remainder of the bed is filled with half-liquid sand.

The navigation of the Indus is monotonous enough. Were it not for the climate, the view would resemble that on the Maas, near Rotterdam, though with alligators lining the banks instead of logs from the Upper Meuse; but climate affects colour, and every country has tints of its own. California is golden, New Zealand a black-green, Australia yellow, the Indus valley is of a blazing red. Although every evening the Beloochee mountains came in sight as the sun sank down behind them, and revealed their shapes in shadow, all through the day the landscape was one of endless flats. The river is a dirty flood, now swift, now sluggish, running through a country in which sand deserts alternate only with fields of stone.