The natives called it the Tope of Maunicyaula, and said it was built by the gods.*

Many bushes, and one pretty large Banyan tree, grow out of the building.

Before we reached the Hydaspes, we had a view of the famous fort of Rotas, but it was at a great distance, owing to our having left the main road, and crossed fifteen or sixteen miles lower down than the usual ferry at Jailum. Rotas we understood to be an extensive but strong fort on a low bill.

We crossed the Hydaspes at Jellalpoor, in the course of five days, from the 22d of July to the 26th inclusive. I was greatly struck with the difference between the banks of this river; the left bank had all the characteristics of the plains of India, it was indeed as flat and as rich as Bengal, which it greatly resembled the right bank, on the contrary, was formed by the end of the range of salt hills, formerly seen at Callabaugh, and had an air of extreme ruggedness and wildness, that must inspire a fearful presentiment of the country he was entering, into

* Tope is an expression used for a mound or burrow as far west as Peshawer, and Maunicyaula is the name of an adjoining village. The drawing was made at Poona under my direction, from sketches made by different gentlemen on the day after our visit to Maunicyaula. In such circumstances, minute accuracy cannot be expected, but the general idea conveyed by the drawing is I think correct.

the mind of a traveller from the east. The hills still retain the red colour for which they were so remarkable, where we crossed them before. They came to the edge of the river, which being also divided by islands, presents exactly the appearance one expects from the accounts of the ancients. So precisely does Quintus Curtius's description of the scene of Porus's battle correspond with the part of the Hydaspes where we crossed, that several gentlemen of the mission who read the passage on the spot, were persuaded that it referred to the very place before their eyes.

After passing the Hydaspes, we continued our march across the Punjaub, which occupied from the 26th of July till the 29th of August. My account of this part of the journey need not be long as far west as Lahore has been visited by English gentlemen; and Sir John Malcolm has already given all that is desirable to know respecting the Siks, the most remarkable part of the population.

The fertility of the Punjaub appears to have been too much extolled by our geographers: except near rivers, no part of it will bear a comparison with the British provinces in Hindostan, and still less with Bengal, which it has been thought to resemble. In the part I passed through, the soil was generally sandy, and by no means rich: the country nearer the hills was

said to be better, and that further to the south, worse. Of the four divisions of the Punjaub east of the Hydaspes, the two nearest to that river are chiefly pastured on by herds of oxen and buffaloes: and that most to the east, towards the Hysudrus, or Sutledge, though most sterile, is best cultivated. The two former are quite flat; the latter is wavy, but there is not a hill to the east of the Hydaspes, and rarely a tree, except of the dwarfish race of Baubool. On the whole, not a third of the country we saw was cultivated. It, however, contained many fine villages, and some large towns, but most of the latter bore strong marks of decay. Umritsir alone, the sacred city of the Siks, and lately the seat of their national councils, appeared to be increasing; on the contrary, Lahore is hastening fast to ruin, but the domes and minarets of the mosques, the lofty walls of the fort, the massy terraces of the garden of Shaulimar, the splendid mausoleum of the emperor Jehangeer, and the numberless inferior tombs and places of worship that surround the town, still render it an object of curiosity and admir

ation.

The inhabitants become more and more like the natives of Hindostan, as we move towards the east the most numerous class were the Juts, and next to them the Hindoos: the Siks, though the masters of the country, were few in number;

we often made a whole march without seeing one, and they no where bore any proportion to the rest of the population. After crossing the Hydaspes, we found the Siks unmannerly and sullen, probably from political causes, for they are naturally a merry people, careless, childish, and easily amused, fond of hunting, and given up to drinking and debauchery. Almost the whole of the Punjaub belongs to Runjeet Sing, who in 1805 was but one of many chiefs, but who, when we passed, had acquired the sovereignty of all the Siks in the Punjaub, and was assuming the title of King. Towards the east, his territories are bounded by states under the protection of the British, but on all the other sides he is busied in subjugating his weak neighbours, by the same mixture of force and craft that he so successfully employed against the chiefs of his own nation. On crossing the Sutledge, we reached the British cantonment of Lodeeana, from whence the mission proceeded straight to Delly, a distance of two hundred miles.

136

BOOK I.

GEOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION OF AFGHAUNISTAUN.

CHAP. I.

SITUATION AND BOUNDARIES OF AFGHAUNISTAUN.

IT

is difficult to fix the limits of the kingdom of Caubul. The countries under the sovereignty of the King of Caubul, once extended sixteen degrees in longitude from Sirhind, about one hundred and fifty miles from Delly, to Meshhed, about an equal distance from the Caspian sea. In breadth they reached from the Oxus to the Persian gulph, a space including thirteen degrees of latitude, or nine hundred and ten miles.

But this great empire has, of late, suffered a considerable diminution, and the distracted state of the goverment prevents the King's exercising authority even over several of the countries which are still included in his dominions. this uncertainty I shall adopt the test made use of by the Asiatics themselves, and shall consider the King's sovereignty as extending over all the

In