r rushes down
a tremendous gorge, where it appears to break through the western
Himalaya, skirts Haramosh, and at a point twenty-five miles east of
Gilgit bends abruptly to the south. Shortly after it is joined from the
west by the Gilgit river, and here the bed is about 4000 feet above sea
level. Continuing to flow south for another twenty miles it resumes its
westernly course to the north of Nanga Parvat and persists in it for 100
miles. Our political post of Chilas lies in this section on the south
bank. Fifty or sixty miles west of Chilas the Indus turns finally to the
south. From Jalkot, where the Kashmir frontier is left, to Palosi below
the Mahaban mountain it flows for a hundred miles through territory over
which we only exercise political control. Near Palosi, 812 miles from
the source, the river enters British India. In Kashmir the Indus and the
Shyok in some places flow placidly over alluvial flats, and at others
with a rapid and broken current through narrow gorges. At Skardo their
united stream is said, even in winter, to be 500 feet wide and nine or
ten feet deep. If one of the deep gorges, as sometimes happens, is
choked by a landslip, the flood that follows when the barrier finally
bursts may spread devastation hundreds of miles away. To the north of
the fertile Chach plain in Attock there is a wide stretch of land along
the Indus, which still shows in its stony impoverished soil the effects
of the great flood of 1841.

[Illustration: Fig. 12. The Indus at Attock.]

[Illustration: Fig. 13. Indus at Kafirkot, D.I. Khan dt.]

~The Indus in British India.~--After reaching British India the Indus soon
becomes the boundary dividing Hazara and Peshawar, two districts of the
North West Frontier Province. Lower down it parts Peshawar from the
Panjab district of Attock. In this section after a time the hills recede
on both sides, and the stream is wide and so shallow that it is fordable
in places in the cold weather. There are islands, ferry boats and rafts
can ply, and the only danger is from sudden freshets. Ohind, where
Alexander crossed, is in this section. A more famous passage is at
Attock just below the junction of the Kabul river. Here the heights
again approach the Indus on either bank. The volume of water is vastly
increased by the union of the Kabul river, which brings down the whole
drainage of the southern face of the Hindu Kush. From the north it
receives near Jalalabad the Kunar river, and near C