Page:Provincial geographies of India (Volume 1).djvu/66

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46
RIVERS
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at the Hoshyarpur border and then turns to the south, maintaining that trend till Rupar and the head-works of the Sirhind canal are reached. For the next hundred miles to the Bias 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 Chenab at the south corner of the Multan district. There are railway bridges at Phillaur, Ferozepur, and Adamwahan. In the plains the Sutlej districts are — on the right bank Hoshyarpur, Jalandhar, Lahore, and Montgomery, and on the left Ambala, Ludhiana and Ferozepur. Below Ferozepur the river divides Montgomery and Multan from Bahawalpur (left bank). The Sutlej 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 Ludhiana and below the Bias junction many monsoon canals have been dug which inundate a large area in the lowlands of the districts on either bank and of Bahawalpur. The dry bed of the Hakra, which can be traced through Bahawalpur, 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 Sirmur State in the hills to the east of Kalka. A few miles south of Kalka it crosses a narrow neck of the Ambala district, and the bridge on the Ambala-Kalka railway is in this section. The rest of its course, till it loses itself in the sands of Bikaner, is chiefly in Patiala and the Karnal and Hissar districts. It is joined by the Umla torrent in Karnal and lower down the Sarusti unites with it in Patiala just beyond the Karnal border. It is hard to believe that the Sarusti of to-day is the famous Sarasvati of the Vedas, though the little ditch-like channel that