The Asiatic low lands are continued westward from the Indian peninsula by the Punjab and the great Indian desert. “The Punjab, or country of the five rivers,” lies at the base of the Hindoo Coosh. Its most northern part consists of fertile terraces highly cultivated, and valleys at the foot of the mountains. It is very productive in the plain within the limits of the periodical inundations of the rivers, and where it is watered by canals; in other parts it is pastoral. Lahore occupies the chief part of the Punjab, and the city of that name on the Indus, once the rival of Delhi, lies on the high road from Persia to India, and was made the capital of the kingdom by Runjeet Sing. The valley of the Indus throughout partakes of the character of the Punjab; it is fertile only where it is within reach of water; much of it is delta, which is occupied by rice-grounds; the rest is pasture, or sterile salt marshes. South of the Punjab, and between the fertile plains of Hindostan and the left bank of the Indus, lies the great Indian desert, which is about 400 miles broad, and becomes more and more arid as it approaches the river. It consists of a hard clay, covered with shifting sand, driven into high waves by the wind, with some parts that are verdant after the rains. In the province of Cutch, south of the desert, a space of 7000 square miles, known as the Run of Cutch, is alternately a sandy desert and an inland sea. In April the waves of the sea are driven over it by the prevailing winds, leaving only a few grassy eminences, the resort of wild asses. The desert of Mekram, an equally barren tract, extends along the Gulf of Oman from the mouths of the Indus to the Persian Gulf: in some places, however, it produces the Indian palm and the aromatic shrubs of Arabia Felix. It was the line followed by Alexander the Great returning with his army from India. The scathed shores of the Arabian Gulf, where not a blade of grass freshens the arid sands, and the uncultivated valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, separate Asia from Arabia and Africa, the most desert regions in the old world.