[Sidenote: JUNCTION OF INDUS WITH SHAYUK. _December, 1847._]
To the eastward of the village of Gol the valley of the Indus again becomes a little wider, an open sandy plain extending round the junction of the two rivers. The cultivation round Gol is on a high platform of alluvium; but the road descends, soon after leaving the village, nearly to the level of the river, and continues over the low ground, skirting the mountains of the southern bank, till it reaches the junction of the two rivers, where it turns abruptly to the south, ascending the left bank of the Indus, which runs nearly due north in a narrow rocky ravine. A bluff projecting ridge of granite, sixty or eighty feet high, polished on the surface by aqueous action, and of a brilliantly brown-black colour, so that the nature of the rock is only discoverable by breaking it, here advances close to the river, and is crossed by a steep sinuous path, eked out by flights of steps, with wooden supports, where it would otherwise be impracticable. The Indus is here very narrow and deep, and runs with an extremely rapid current. The path, after crossing this ridge, again descends to the level of the river. Even in this narrow ravine I was surprised to find the fine cream-coloured clay of the lacustrine formation, similar to many of the beds of the same deposit round Iskardo. It was here quite on a level with the river.
[Sidenote: INDUS VALLEY. _December, 1847._]
The mountains rise on both sides of the Indus very abruptly, being almost always precipitous. From the narrowness of the valley the great elevation of these is not seen, and the lesser height of those on the right bank of the Indus, which form the termination of the chain separating that river from the Shayuk, is not brought prominently to notice. For more than two miles, the ravine continues very narrow, and several steep spurs are crossed. It then becomes gradually a little wider, narrow platforms of conglomerate skirting the stream, and changes its direction from nearly due south to south-east. The right bank is stony and unproductive the whole way, but on the left there is one small village, three miles from the junction of the Shayuk, and thence after three miles of desert, a succession of small villages continuing with little intermission on the surface of alluvial platforms as far as Parkuta, at which I encamped. In one of the villages a good many small juniper-trees were seen.