558 Lieutenant Burnes’ Memoir on the 
caused the overflow, was not broken through within this period, and not for 
two months after the usual swell of the season had subsided ; so that if the 
bands are not again thrown up, it will have the advantage of future floods 
to deepen, and still further open the channel through the Al/ah-band, and 
may again bring back to Cutch its lost fields. I am not sufficiently aware 
of the breadth of the P’harrdn river before 1819, to draw a comparison 
between it and the present channel through Allah-band, which is only one 
hundred and twenty feet wide, though from fifteen to eighteen feet deep. 
If the influx of fresh water from the Indus, after passing over a parched 
and thirsty desert and entering an inland Jake by so narrow a channel as 
that through Allah-band, has had such an effect as to sweeten the water 
above Stndri, to change the whole body of it from salt to brackish, and 
even extend its influence so low us Lacpat, every hope is to be entertained 
that a further change will take place, for the body of salt sea-water which 
it passed through, extended for fifty-three miles, and it had besides to 
contend with tides, certainly not strong ones, but which always flow up as 
high as Lbrahim Shah Pir, thirty miles above Lacpat. 
I am disposed to place much reliance on succeeding inundations, and do 
not look upon it as improbable that the Indus itself may in the dry season 
once more send off its waters, as it did in 1826. The effect of a repetition 
of these inundations would clearly tend to deepen the channel of the P’har- 
vdn river, and thus, pursuing a steady onward course to the sea, it would 
carry along with it, in process of time, the water that has lodged about 
Sindri, and which will of course continue as long as there is no stream 
passing through it, and nothing in fact to disturb it. If this result should 
follow, the Cutch government will be again put in possession of the Saira, 
which contributed so much to the prosperity of their ancestors. I am not 
inclined to despair of seeing such a change take place, and instead of 
looking upon the effects which the late overflow has produced as trifling and 
unproductive of any material alteration, it seems to me remarkable that the 
fresh water should have exerted such an influence, considering the field 
over which it spread had been under the dominion of the sea since 1819, 
and the enormous quantity of salt water it had to encounter. 
Iam willing to admit that if the Al/ah-band had never been thrown up, 
these prospects would have been considerably brightened ; for since 1762 
the water had been gradually receding from the river, though it had not 
left the channel entirely dry, and till the earthquake of 1819, was navigable 
