soil into a stiff impervious clay, where flood-water will lie for weeks
without being absorbed into the soil. In Karnal the wretched and
fever-stricken tract between the Ghagar and the Sarusti known as the
Naili is of this character.

~The Jamna.~--The Jamna is the Yamuna of Sanskrit writers. Ptolemy's and
Pliny's versions, Diamouna and Jomanes, do not deviate much from the
original. It rises in the Kumaon Himalaya, and, where it first meets the
frontier of the Simla Hill States, receives from the north a large
tributary called the Tons. Henceforth, speaking broadly, the Jamna is
the boundary of the Panjab and the United Provinces. On the Panjab bank
are from north to south the Sirmur State, Ambala, Karnal, Rohtak, Delhi,
and Gurgaon. The river leaves the Panjab where Gurgaon and the district
of Mathra, which belongs to the United Provinces, meet, and finally
falls into the Ganges at Allahabad. North of Mathra Delhi is the only
important town on its banks. The Jamna is crossed by railway bridges
between Delhi and Meerut and between Ambala and Saharanpur.

~Changes in Rivers.~--Allusion has already been made to the changes which
the courses of Panjab rivers are subject to in the plains. The Indus
below Kalabagh once ran through the heart of what is now the Thal
desert. We know that in 1245 A.D. Multan was in the Sind Sagar Doab
between the Indus and the united streams of the Jhelam, Chenab, and
Ravi. The Bias had then no connection with the Sutlej, but ran in a bed
of its own easily to be traced to-day in the Montgomery and Multan
districts, and joined the Indus between Multan and Uch. The Sutlej was
still flowing in the Hakra bed. Indeed its junction with the Bias near
Harike, which probably led to a complete change in the course of the
Bias, seems only to have taken place within the last 150 years[2].

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: Raverty's "The Mehran of Sind and its Tributaries," in
_Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal_, 1897.]

CHAPTER IV

GEOLOGY AND MINERAL RESOURCES

~Extent of Geological Record.~--Although the main part of the Panjab plain
is covered by a mantle of comparatively recent alluvium, the provinces
described in this book display a more complete record of Indian
geological history than any other similar area in the country. The
variety is so great that no systematic or sufficient description could
be attempted in a short chapter, and it is not possible, therefore, to
do more in these few