Mutiny days have been swept clean, and many ancient mysteries have been solved in the course of its surveying.
From its entrance into the plains of India to its disappearance
in the Indian Ocean, the Indus of to-day is the Indus of the ’fifties—modified
only in some interesting particulars. It
has been bridged at several important points. There
Indus of
the plains.
are bridges even in its upper mountain courses.
There is a wooden pier bridge at Leh of two spans, and
there are native suspension bridges of cane or twig-made rope
swaying uneasily across the stream at many points intervening
between Leh and Bunji; but the first English-made iron suspension
bridge is a little above Bunji, linking up the highroad
between Kashmir and Gilgit. Next occurs the iron girder
railway bridge at Attock, connecting Rawalpindi with Peshawar,
at which point the river narrows almost to a gorge, only 900 ft.
above sea-level. Twenty miles below Attock the river has
carved out a central trough which is believed to be 180 ft. deep.
Forty miles below Attock another great bridge has been constructed
at Kushalgarh, which carries the railway to Kohat
and the Kurram valley. At Mari, beyond the series of gorges
which continue from Kushalgarh to the borders of the Kohat
district, on the Sind-Sagar line, a boat-bridge leads to Kalabagh
(the Salt city) and northwards to Kohat. Another boat-bridge
opposite Dera Ismail Khan connects that place with the railway;
but there is nothing new in these southern sections of the Indus
valley railway system except the extraordinary development
of cultivation in their immediate neighbourhood. The Lansdowne
bridge at Sukkur, whose huge cantilevers stand up as a
monument of British enterprise visible over the flat plains for
many miles around, is one of the greatest triumphs of Indian
bridge-making. Kotri has recently been connected with
Hyderabad in Sind, and the Indus is now one of the best-bridged
rivers in India. The intermittent navigation which was maintained
by the survivals of the Indus flotilla as far north as Dera
Ismail Khan long after the establishment of the railway system
has ceased to exist with the dissolution of the fleet, and the
high-sterned flat Indus boats once again have the channels
and sandbanks of the river all to themselves.
Within the limits of Sind the vagaries of the Indus channels
have necessitated a fresh survey of the entire riverain. The
results, however, indicate not so much a marked
departure in the general course of the river as a great
Lower
Indus and
delta.
variation in the channel beds within what may be
termed its outside banks. Collaterally much new
information has been obtained about the ancient beds of the
river, the sites of ancient cities and the extraordinary developments
of the Indus delta. The changing channels of the main
stream since those prehistoric days when a branch of it found
its way to the Runn of Cutch, through successive stages of its
gradual shift westwards—a process of displacement which
marked the disappearance of many populous places which were
more or less dependent on the river for their water supply—to
the last and greatest change of all, when the stream burst
its way through the limestone ridges of Sukkur and assumed
a course which has been fairly constant for 150 years, have all
been traced out with systematic care by modern surveyors till
the medieval history of the great river has been fully gathered
from the characters written on the delta surface. That such
changes of river bed and channel should have occurred within
a comparatively limited period of time is the less astonishing
if we remember that the Indus, like many of the greatest rivers
of the world, carries down sufficient detritus to raise its own bed
above the general level of the surrounding plains in an appreciable
and measurable degree. At the present time the bed of the
Indus is stated to be 70 ft. above the plains of the Sind frontier,
some 50 m. to the west of it.
The total length of the Indus, measured directly, is about 1500 m. With its many curves and windings it stretches to about 2000 m., the area of its basin being computed at 372,000 sq. m. Even at its lowest in winter it is 500 ft. wide at Iskardo (near Statistics. the Gilgit junction) and 9 or 10 ft. deep. The temperature of the surface water during the cold season in the plains is found to be 5° below that of the air (64° and 69° F.). At the beginning of the hot season, when the river is bringing down snow water, the difference is 14° (87° and 101° June). At greater depths the difference is still greater. At Attock, where the river narrows between rocky banks, a height of 50 ft. in the flood season above lowest level is common, with a velocity of 13 m. per hour. The record rise (since British occupation of the Punjab) is 80 ft. At its junction with the Panjnad (the combined rivers of the Punjab east of the Indus) the Panjnad is twice the width of the Indus, but its mean depth is less, and its velocity little more than one-third. This discharge of the Panjnad at low season is 69,000 cubic ft. per second, that of the Indus 92,000. Below the junction the united discharge in flood season is 380,000 cubic ft., rising to 460,000 (the record in August). The Indus after receiving the other rivers carries down into Sind, in the high flood season, turbid water containing silt to the amount of 1229 part by weight, or 1410 by volume—equal to 6480 millions of cubic ft. in the three months of flood. This is rather less than the Ganges carries. The silt is very fine sand and clay. Unusual floods, owing to landslips or other exceptional causes, are not infrequent. The most disastrous flood of this nature occurred in 1858. It was then that the river rose 80 ft. at Attock. The most striking result of the rise was the reversal of the current of the Kabul river, which flowed backwards at the rate of 10 m. per hour, flooding Nowshera and causing immense damage to property. The prosperity of the province of Sind depends almost entirely on the waters of the Indus, as its various systems of canals command over nine million acres out of a cultivable area of twelve and a half million acres.
See Maclagan, Proceedings R.G.S., vol. iii.; Haig, The Indus Delta Country (London, 1894); Godwin-Austen, Proceedings R.G.S., vol. vi. (T. H. H.*)
INDUSTRIA (mod. Monteù da Po), an ancient town of Liguria,
20 m. N.E. of Augusta Taurinorum. Its original name was
Bodincomagus, from the Ligurian name of the Padus (mod.
Po), Bodincus, i.e. bottomless (Plin. Hist. Nat. iii. 122), and
this still appears on inscriptions of the early imperial period.
It stood on the right bank of the river, which has now changed
its course over 1 m. to the north. It was a flourishing town,
with municipal rights, as excavations (which have brought to
light the forum, theatre, baths, &c.) have shown, but appears
to have been deserted in the 4th century A.D.
See A. Fabietti in Atti della Società di Archeologia di Torino, iii. 17 seq.; Th. Mommsen in Corp. Inscrip. Lat. v. (Berlin, 1877), p. 845; E. Ferrero in Notizie degli Scavi (1903), p. 43.
INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL, in England a school, generally
established by voluntary contributions, for the industrial
training of children, in which children are lodged, clothed and
fed, as well as taught. Industrial schools are chiefly for vagrant
and neglected children and children not convicted of theft.
Such schools are for children up to the age of fourteen, and the
limit of detention is sixteen. They are regulated by the Children
Act 1908, which repealed the Industrial Schools Act 1866,
as amended by Acts of 1872, 1891 and 1901, and parallel legislation
in the various Elementary Education Acts, besides some
few local acts. The home secretary exercises powers of supervision,
&c. See Juvenile Offenders.
INDUSTRY (Lat. industria, from indu-, a form of the preposition
in, and either stare, to stand, or struere, to pile up),
the quality of steady application to work, diligence; hence
employment in some particular form of productive work,
especially of manufacture; or a particular class of productive
work itself, a trade or manufacture. See Labour Legislation,
&c.
INE, king of the West Saxons, succeeded Ceadwalla in 688, his title to the crown being derived from Ceawlin. In the earlier part of his reign he was at war with Kent, but peace was made in 694, when the men of Kent gave compensation for the death of Mul, brother of Ceadwalla, whom they had burned in 687. In 710 Ine was fighting in alliance with his kinsman Nun, probably king of Sussex, against Gerent of West Wales and, according to Florence of Worcester, he was victorious. In 715 he fought a battle with Ceolred, king of Mercia, at Woodborough in Wiltshire, but the result is not recorded. Shortly after this time a quarrel seems to have arisen in the royal family. In 721 Ine slew Cynewulf, and in 722 his queen Aethelburg destroyed Taunton, which her husband had built earlier in his reign. In 722 the South Saxons, previously subject to Ine, rose against him under the exile Aldbryht, who may have been a member of the West Saxon royal house. In 725 Ine fought with the South Saxons and slew Aldbryht. In 726 he resigned