Page:The Seven Cities of Delhi.djvu/117

 Turkman gates of the modern city, and looks extremely like an old bend of the river. Finch, who saw Delhi in January, 1611, calls this ravine, spanned by the "Barah Palah" bridge, near Nizam-ud-din's shrine, an "arm of the Jumna." Then, again, the ravine which runs near the walls of the enclosure of Roshan Chiragh Delhi, may be part of an old channel — a theory which is to some extent borne out by the fact that the walls of Old Delhi, where they cross the Kutb Road, appear to follow an old river-bank. In addition to this, we have a tradition that a Hindu king built the Kutb Minar in order to enable his daughter to daily see the river without the trouble of taking a fatiguing journey. This also may show that the river had receded. To show the effect of the canals on the river, it is on record that the reopening of the canal of Firoze Shah, about 1820, caused the flood-level at Muttra to fall two feet. It is significant that the founding of Firozabad followed the first opening of that canal.

It may be objected that there is no absolute proof of all this, but as well might it be objected that the scientist is wrong, who attributes an incomplete skeleton to a certain antediluvian animal, because he finds two or three characteristic bones. A regular survey might throw more