[1] The district was traversed by the main line of the North-Western Railway, from Lahore to Multan; it is irrigated by the Upper Sutlej inundation canal system and also from the Ravi.
[1] The sites of Kamalia and Harappa contain large mounds of antique bricks and other ruins[1] left by the Indus Valley Civilisation, while many other remains of ancient cities or villages lie scattered along the river bank, or dotted the then-barren stretches of the central waste.
The pastoral tribes of this barren expanse did not appear to have paid more than a nominal allegiance to the Muslim rulers, and even in the 19th century, when Ranjit Singh extended the Sikh supremacy as far as Multan, the population for the most part remained in a chronic state of rebellion.
Before the end of May, emissaries from Delhi crossed the river from Sirsa and Hissar, where open rebellion was already rife, and met with a ready reception from the Kharrals and other fierce Jat clans.
At the same time Ahmad Khan, a famous Kharral leader, who had been detained at Gogera, broke his arrest, and, though apprehended, was released on security, together with several other suspected chieftains.
Several minor actions followed in the open field, until finally the rebels, driven from the plain into the wildest jungles of the interior, were utterly defeated and dispersed.
[4] In the former tract a fringe of cultivated lowland skirted the bank of either river, but the whole interior upland consisted of a desert plateau partially overgrown with brushwood and coarse grass, and impenetrable jungle in places.