556 Lieutenant Burnes’ Memoir on the 
landing-place is much exposed, and large boats cannot ascend higher up 
the river, so that they ship their cargoes on board small craft for Lacpat. 
The P’harrdn river had undergone so many alterations that it had even 
lost the name of the parent stream, and was known on one side of Ali- 
band by the designation of Cord, while it was called P’harrdn on the 
other. The natives therefore, in speaking of the Lacpat branch of the 
Indus, use always the term of Cori, which, from what I can understand, 
means a creek of the sea. This creek gradually widens below Lacpat, and 
at Cotasir the one bank has receded from the other upwards of five miles, 
and forms its mouth.* 
From the halting place of Cotri there is a high road leading through Pdllia 
and Gharrt to Hydrdbdd, by which route the horsest come annually from 
Khorasan and Candahar and are crossed in boats to Lacpat. For the first thirty 
miles the road is a salt desert, and skirts along the inland lake, which was 
formed by the earthquake, as may be discovered from its passing Pdllia ; 
and with a view of circumscribing as much as possible the limits on which 
I shall have to remark, I give this road as the western boundary. The 
eastern limit of this lake is also skirted by the high road from Cutch to 
Sinde, and which formerly led through Sindri, but is now necessarily 
sixteen miles eastward of it. It leads from Narra, by Luna, on the Banni 
or grass lands, to Raoma-ca-bizdr, and thus encloses an inland sea of about 
five or perhaps six hundred square miles. 
The rivers in a country subject to periodical rains necessarily undergo 
many alterations, chiefly from the greater velocity and quantity of the 
water they contain in their channels at different seasons. ‘This has been 
the case in so striking a manner with the delta of the Indus, that neither a 
harbour nor the course of any particular branch can be depended on for a 
longer period than a season. The eastern mouth, as I have before said, 
might be considered as shut against the waters of the main Indus for the 
last sixty-five years; and though the numerous mouths of this mighty river 
would seem sufficient for the egress of its waters, yet the bursting of the 
bands in the most paltry branch shew that they have still a tendency to 
escape by Lacpat ; and when we look on the map, this does not appear 
extraordinary, for to the westward the Indus is hemmed in by the rocky 
* See note E. + See note F. 
