2-981-947 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Taking soundings on board a steamer on the Indus, 1876. 'The navigation of this great river, which, below the confluence of the Punjaub "five rivers"...has yet a further course of five hundred miles to the sea, should afford considerable aid to inland commerce. The Indus is navigable...nearly a thousand miles from the ocean, though still 8- or 900 miles from the source of this wonderful stream in the Himalayas of Thibet. But its channel is...greatly obstructed by shifting sands, and it undergoes frequent alterations of the bed and rapid variations of the currents, which make it needful to observe the greatest care with the steam-boats of very light draught...A passenger...will often hear the cry "Charr Fo-oo-t!" "Four Feet!" [uttered by] the man with the sounding rod, in the bow of a river steamer which has gone aground...It happens...two or three times a day in the dry season...and it occasionally causes a delay of several hours'. From "Illustrated London News", 1876.