Railway crosses it by a bridge near the Bias station and at the same place there is a bridge of boats for the traffic on the Grand Trunk Road. The chief affluents are the Chakki, the torrent which travellers to Dharmsala cross by a fine bridge twelve miles from the rail-head at Pathankot, and the Black Bein in Hoshyarpur and Kapurthala. The latter is a winding drainage channel, which starts in a swamp in the north of the Hoshyarpur district. The Bias has a total course of 390 miles. Only for about eighty miles or so is it a true river of the plains, and its floods do not spread far.
The Sutlej.— The Sutlej is the Shatadru of Vedic hymns and the Zaradros of Greek writers. The peasant of the Panjab plains knows it as the Nili or Ghara. After the Indus it is the greatest of Panjab rivers, and for its source we have to go back to the Manasarowar lakes in Tibet. From thence it flows for 200 miles in a north-westerly direction to the British frontier near Shipki. A little beyond the Spiti river brings it the drainage of the large tract of that name in Kangra and of part of Western Tibet. From Shipki it runs for forty miles in deep gorges through Kunawar in the Bashahr State to Chini, a beautiful spot near the Wangtu bridge, where the Hindustan-Tibet road crosses to the left bank. A little below Chini the Baspa flows in from the south-east. The fall between the source and Chini is from 15,000 to 7500 feet. There is magnificent cliff scenery at Rogi in this reach. Forty miles below Chini the capital of Bashahr, Rampur, on the south bank, is only 3300 feet above sea level. There is a second bridge at Rampur, and from about this point the river becomes the boundary of Bashahr and Kulu, the route to which from Simla passes over the Luri bridge (2650 feet) below Narkanda. Beyond Luri the Sutlej runs among low hills through several of the Simla Hill States. It pierces the Siwaliks
