Page:The Imperial Gazetteer of India - Volume 10 (2nd edition).pdf/67



MUZAFFARGARII. 55 Punjab, lying between 29° 1' and 30° 46' 45" N. lat., and between 70° 33' and 71° 49' E. long. Area, 3139 square miles. Population (1881) 338,605 persons. Muzaffargarh forms the westernmost District of the Múltán Division. It is bounded on the north by Dera Ismail Khan and Jhang Districts ; on the east and south-east by the river Chenáb, which separates it from Múltán District and Bahawalpur State ; and on the west by the Indus, which separates it from Dera Ghazi Khán District. Muzaffargarh is divided into three tahsils—Sanánwán, which includes all the northern portion of the District, excepting a narrow strip along the right bank of the Chenáb; Alipur, which embraces the southern portion of the District; and Muzaffargarh, the centre. The District stands thirteenth in order of area, and twenty-eighth in order of population among the 32 Districts of the Punjab, and comprises 2*9.4 per cent of the total area, and 1.So per cent. of the total population of the Lieutenant-Governorship. The administrative head-quarters are at the town of MUZAFFARGARH. Physical Aspects.—The District of Muzaffargarh occupies the extreme southern apex of the Sind Sagar Doáb, the wedge-shaped tract between the Indus and the confluent waters of the Fire Rivers or Panjnad, locally known as the Chenáb. The District stretches northward from their confluence in a narrow ridge of land gradually widening for about 130 miles, until at its northern border a distance of some 55 miles intervenes between their channels. Its shape is therefore that of a tolerably regular triangle, with the base resting against the cis-Indus portion of Dera Ismail Khán. The northern half of the District consists of the valley of the Indus on the west, the valley of the Chenab on the east, while the wild thal or central desert of the Sind Sagar Doáb extends for a considerable distance down its midst. This arid plateau, rising like a backbone in the centre of the wedge, has a width of 40 miles in the extreme north, and terminates abruptly on either side in a high bank, about 10 miles from the present bed of the Indus, and 3 miles from that of the Chenáb. As the rivers converge, the thal gradually contracts, until, about 10 miles south of Muzaffargarh town it disappears altogether. Though apparently an elevated table-land, it is really composed of separate sand-hills, whose intermediate valleys lie at a lower level than that of the Indus, and have at times been flooded by the bursting of the western barrier ridge or bank, Scattered amid this waste of sand-heaps, a few good plots of land occur, which the ceaseless industry of the Ját cultivators has converted into smiling fields of grain. The border strips which fringe the thal towards the rivers are for the most part under cultivation, but wide reaches of barren soil, especially on the Indus side, often separate the tilled patches with a towering growth of jungle grass, glistening stretches of white saline