~The Indus Basin.~--The river Sindh (Sanskrit, Sindhu), more familiar to
us under its classical name of the Indus, must have filled with
astonishment every invader from the west, and it is not wonderful that
they called after it the country that lay beyond. Its basin covers an
area of 373,000 square miles. Confining attention to Asia these figures,
large though they seem, are far exceeded by those of the Yangtsze-Kiang.
The area of which a description is attempted in this book is, with the
exception of a strip along the Jamna and the part of Kashmir lying
beyond the Muztagh-Karakoram range, all included in the Indus basin. But
it does not embrace the whole of it. Part is in Tibet, part in
Afghanistan and Biluchistan, and part in Sindh, through which province
the Indus flows for 450 miles, or one-quarter of its whole course of
1800 miles. It seems likely that the Jamna valley was not always an
exception, or at least that that river once flowed westwards through
Rajputana to the Indian ocean. The five great rivers of the Panjab all
drain into the Indus, and the Ghagar with its tributary, the Sarusti,
which now, even when in flood, loses itself in the sands of Bikaner,
probably once flowed down the old Hakra bed in Bahawalpur either into
the Indus or by an independent bed now represented by an old flood
channel of the Indus in Sindh, the Hakro or Nara, which passes through
the Rann of Kachh.

~The Indus outside British India.~--To the north of the Manasarowar lake
in Tibet is Kailas, the Hindu Olympus. On the side of this mountain the
Indus is said to rise at a height of 17,000 feet. After a course of 200
miles or more it crosses the south-east boundary of the Kashmir State at
an elevation of 13,800 feet. From the Kashmir frontier to Mt Haramosh
west of Gilgit it flows steadily to the north-west for 350 miles. After
125 miles Leh, the capital of Ladakh, is reached at a height of 10,500
feet, and here the river is crossed by the trade route to Yarkand. A
little below Leh the Indus receives the Zanskar, which drains the
south-east of Kashmir. After another 150 miles it flows through the
basin, in which Skardo, the principal town in Baltistan, is situated.
Above Skardo a large tributary, the Shyok, flows in from the east at an
elevation of 8000 feet. The Shyok and its affluent, the Nubra, rise in
the giant glaciers to the south-west of the Karakoram pass. After the
Skardo basin is left behind the descent is rapid. The rive