Lahore, divides Montgomery and Lyallpur, and flowing through the north of Multán joins the Chenáb near the Jhang border. In Multán there is a remarkable straight reach in the channel known as the Sídhnai, which has been utilized for the site of the head-works of a small canal. The Degh, a torrent which rises in the Jammu hills and has a long course through the Siálkot and Gujránwála districts, joins the Ráví when in flood in the north of the Lyallpur district. But its waters will now be diverted into the river higher up in order to safeguard the Upper Chenáb canal. Lahore is on the left bank of the Ráví. It is a mile from the cold weather channel, but in high floods the waters have often come almost up to the Fort. At Lahore the North Western Railway and the Grand Trunk Road are carried over the Ráví by masonry bridges. There is a second railway bridge over the Sídhnai reach in Multán. Though the Ráví, like the Jhelam, has a course of 450 miles, it has a far smaller catchment area, and is really a somewhat insignificant stream. In the cold weather, the canal takes such a heavy toll from it that below Mádhopur the supply of water is mainly drawn from the Ujh, and in Montgomery one may cross the bed dryshod for months together. The valley of the Ráví is far narrower than those of the rivers described in the preceding paragraphs, and the floods are most uncertain, but when they occur are of very great value.
The Biás.—The Biás (Sanskrit, Vipasa; Greek, Hyphasis) rises near the Rotang pass at a height of about 13,000 feet. Its head-waters are divided from those of the Ráví by the Bara Bangáhal range. It flows for about sixty miles through the beautiful Kulu valley to Lárjí (3000 feet). It has at first a rapid course, but before it reaches Sultánpur (4000 feet), the chief village in Kulu, some thirty miles from the source, it has become, at least in the cold weather, a comparatively peaceful stream fringed with alder thickets. Heavy floods, however, sometimes cover fields and orchards with sand and boulders. There is a bridge at Manálí (6100 feet), a very lovely spot, another below Nagar, and a third at Lárjí. Near Lárjí the river turns to the west down a bold ravine and becomes for a time the boundary between Kulu and the Mandí State. Near the town of Mandí, where it is bridged, it bends again, and winds in a north-west and westerly direction through low hills in the south of Kángra till it meets the Siwáliks on the Hoshyárpur border. In this reach there is a bridge of boats at Dera Gopípur on the main road from Jalandhar and Hoshyárpur to Dharmsála. Elsewhere in the south of Kángra the traveller can cross without difficulty on a small bed supported on inflated skins. Sweeping round the northern end of the Siwáliks the Biás, having after long parting again approached within about fifteen miles of the Ráví, turns definitely to the south, forming henceforth the dividing line between Hoshyárpur and Kapúrthala (left bank) and Gurdáspur and Amritsar (right). Finally above the Harike ferry at a point where Lahore, Amritsar, Ferozepur, and Kapúrthala nearly meet, it falls into the Sutlej. The North Western Railway crosses it by a bridge near the Biás station and at the same place there is a bridge of boats for the traffic on the Grand Trunk Road. The chief affluents are the Chakkí, the torrent which travellers to Dharmsála cross by a fine bridge twelve miles from the railhead at Pathánkot, and the Black Bein in Hoshyárpur and Kapúrthala. The latter is a winding drainage channel, which starts in a swamp in the north of the Hoshyárpur district. The Biás has a total course of 390 miles. Only for about eighty miles or so is it a true river of the plains, and its floods do not spread far.
The Sutlej.—The Sutlej is the Shatadru of Vedic hymns and the Zaradros of Greek writers. The peasant of the Panjáb plains knows it as the Nílí or Ghara. After the Indus it is the greatest of Panjáb rivers, and for its source we have to go back to the Manasarowar lakes in Tibet. From thence it flows for 200 miles in a north-westerly direction to the British frontier near Shipkí. A little beyond the Spití river brings it the drainage of the large tract of that name in Kángra and of part of Western Tibet. From Shipkí it runs for forty miles in deep gorges through Kunáwar in the Bashahr State to Chíní, a beautiful spot near the Wangtu bridge, where the Hindustan-Tibet road crosses to the left bank. A little below Chíní the Báspa flows in from the southeast. The fall between the source and Chíní is from 15,000 to 7500 feet. There is magnificent cliff scenery at Rogí in this reach. Forty miles below Chíní the capital of Bashahr, Rámpur, on the south bank, is only 3300 feet above sea level. There is a second bridge at Rámpur, and from about this point the river becomes the boundary of Bashahr and Kulu, the route to which from Simla passes over the Lurí bridge (2650 feet) below Nárkanda. Beyond Lurí the Sutlej runs among low hills through several of the Simla Hill States. It pierces the Siwáliks at the Hoshyárpur border and then turns to the south, maintaining that trend till Rúpar and the head-works of the Sirhind canal are reached. For the next hundred miles to the Biás junction the general direction is west. Above the Harike ferry the Sutlej again turns, and flows steadily, though with many windings, to the south-west till it joins the Chenáb at the south corner of the Multán district. There are railway bridges at Phillaur, Ferozepur, and Adamwáhan. In the plains the Sutlej districts are—on the right bank Hoshyárpur, Jalandhar, Lahore, and Montgomery, and on the left Ambála, Ludhiána and Ferozepur. Below Ferozepur the river divides Montgomery and Multán from Baháwalpur (left bank). The Sutle; has a course of 900 miles, and a large catchment area in the hills. Notwithstanding the heavy toll taken by the Sirhind canal, its floods spread pretty far in Jalandhar and Ludhiána and below the Biás junction many monsoon canals have been dug which inundate a large area in the lowlands of the districts on either bank and of Baháwalpur. The dry bed of the Hakra, which can be traced through Baháwalpur, Bikaner, and Sindh, formerly carried the waters of the Sutlej to the sea.
The Ghagar and the Sarusti.—The Ghagar, once a tributary of the Hakra, rises within the Sirmúr State in the hills to the east of Kálka. A few miles south of Kálka it crosses a narrow neck of the Ambála district, and the bridge on the Ambála-Kalka railway is in this section. The rest of its course, till it loses itself in the sands of Bikaner, is chiefly in Patiála and the Karnál and Hissár districts. It is joined by the Umla torrent in Karnál and lower down the Sarustí unites with it in Patiála just beyond the Karnál border. It is hard to believe that the Sarustí of to-day is the famous Sarasvatí of the Vedas, though the little ditch-like channel that bears the name certainly passes beside the sacred sites of Thanesar and Pehowa. A small sandy torrent bearing the same name rises in the low hills in the north-east of the Ambála district, but it is doubtful if its waters, which finally disappear into the ground, ever reach the Thanesar channel. That seems rather to originate in the overflow of a rice swamp in the plains, and in the cold weather the bed is usually dry. In fact, till the Sarustí receives above Pehowa the floods of the Márkanda torrent, it is a most insignificant stream. The Márkanda, when in flood, carries a large volume of water, and below the junction the small channel of the Sarustí cannot carry the tribute received, which spreads out into a shallow lake called the Sainsa jhíl. This has been utilized for the supply of the little Sarustí canal, which is intended to do the work formerly effected in a rude way by throwing bands or embankments across the bed of the stream, and forcing the water over the surrounding lands. The same wasteful form of irrigation was used on a large scale on the Ghagar and is still practised on its upper reaches. Lower down earthen bands have been superceded by a masonry weir at Otu in the Hissár district. The northern and southern Ghagar canals, which irrigate lands in Hissár and Bikaner, take off from this weir.
Action of Torrents.—The Ghagar is large enough to exhibit all the three stages which a cho or torrent of intermittent flow passes through. Such a stream begins in the hills with a well-defined boulder-strewn bed, which is never dry. Reaching the plains the bed of a cho becomes a wide expanse of white sand, hardly below the level of the adjoining country, with a thread of water passing down it in the cold weather. But from time to time in the rainy season the channel is full from bank to bank and the waters spill far and wide over the fields. Sudden spates sometimes sweep away men and cattle before they can get across. If, as in Hoshyárpur, the chos flow into a rich plain from hills composed of friable sandstone and largely denuded of tree-growth, they are in their second stage most destructive. After long delay an Act was passed in 1900, which gives the government large powers for the protection of trees in the Siwáliks and the reclamation of torrent beds in