The Lion River : The Indus

Purnell Book Services, London, 1975 reprint edition. Cloth, 8vo,. xv, 290 pp, ills, plates. The Indus is one of the most dramatic rivers in the world, in both historical and geographical terms. It rises in the Forbidden Land of Tibet, from a spring called 'the mouth of the Lion'. In the first part of its course it rushes down between the greatest mountain ranges in the world, the Himalayas and the Karakoram; for hundreds of years monks and missionaries and merchants have travelled along its gorges, explorers and spies of many nationalities have probed the white deserts above it, and soldiers have made war in the high passes that command it. Under the shadow of Nanga Parbat the mountains crowd the river close and force it to turn south, through country as wild and ruthless as the tribes that live there. Then, breaking out of the mountains, for nearly a thousand miles, the Indus wanders across the plains of Pakistan to the Arabian Sea, crossing the routes that innumerable invaders of India have taken, Alexander of Macedon, Huns, Mongols, Afghans. Here, able to spread itself at last, it nourished an elaborate riverine civilization. Hindu kings once fought and hunted near the Indus. Buddhist monks built huge monasteries on its banks. Chinese pilgrims struggled along its perilous cliffs to the Buddhist shrines. A British general lunched on partridges on a bridge of boats and laughed to see his elephants enjoying their bathe. Today the river is the life blood of Pakistan. The extremes of country and climate that the Indus runs through have screened it from outsiders until quite recently: its source was mapped only in the early years of this century, and the traces of its oldest civilization were discovered only some fifty years ago. It is a beautiful and dangerous river, a lion of a river. Even today the Indus, and its people, hillmen, nomads, Pathans and wiry plainsmen, are fierce and largely untamed. " - from the blurb. Near Fine in Very Good dustwrapper.