t may be confined to one, two, or three channels, each
about one to four hundred yards wide; but in the early summer, swollen
by the melting snows of the Himalayas, it overflows its banks, and not
infrequently forms a wide expanse of water ten miles broad from bank to
bank. At such a time the villages, which are built on the more raised
areas of its bed, appear as little islands scattered here and there,
the people of which get to and from the mainland in their boats. It
is then that the tonga, or cart, has often to be dragged over miles
of submerged road, with water from one to three feet deep, before
it reaches the place where it is able to transfer its passengers and
burden to the ferry-boats, which are waiting to carry them across the
deeper portions of the river, and it may be that several changes from
boat to cart and cart to boat have to be made before the traveller
attains the farther shore, where is the railway-station and the train
waiting to carry him down to Karachi or up to Lahore.

In our case, after getting across the main stream in the ferry-boat, we
put our luggage into two carts, and, removing our superfluous clothing,
started to trudge through the inundated country to the station of
Darya Khan, on the eastern bank. Sometimes there was a quarter of a
mile or so of fields not yet submerged; sometimes the water was up
to our knees or hips for miles together, and in one place there was a
deep channel about one hundred yards wide, where a ferry-boat was in
readiness for the luggage, but we enjoyed having a swim across. Two
of the team, who were less practised swimmers, and had miscalculated
the strength of the current, found themselves being carried rapidly
down the stream; but just as some of those who had already gained the
opposite bank were about to return to the rescue, they found their
feet on a sandbank, and were able to struggle across. The thirteen
miles across the swollen river took us from nine in the morning till
four in the afternoon, though it must be admitted we loitered several
times to enjoy a swim in the cool waters of the deeper channels.

We found, too, that the football season differs in various
places. While Calcutta plays football in July and August, Karachi
plays from December to March, and Bombay in the spring. However,
even those colleges which were not in their actual football season
sportingly agreed to get up matches during our visit. In no place
did we find greater enthusiasm