Eastern Branch of the River Indus and Runn. 559 
only for very small boats as high up as Sindri. I fear therefore that the 
earthquake of 1819, by throwing up this natural mound, opposed a resistance 
to a temporary approach of the sea, which would otherwise have had egress 
by the old channel of the P’harrdn, and I am inclined to believe that this 
sheet of water would not have lodged where it has, had it not been checked 
in its course, but would have in time receded to the ocean. 
Besides the resistance which it met with from the Allah-band, the earth- 
quake happened at the very time the south-westerly monsoon winds blow, 
and the body of water which had been impelled up in the first instance by 
the earthquake was fed, for the four months succeeding that event, by a 
daily supply from the sea. 
The earthquake produced another alteration, which strongly corrobo- 
rates the above fact, as it was discovered when the shock had passed, 
that the channel of the Cori was much deepened, which I presume the 
waters had effected before they overflowed their banks, or it perhaps may 
have occurred afterwards when they experienced the resistance which they 
did from Allah-band. That the channel is deepened there can be no doubt, 
for boats of fifty candies could only approach Lacpat previously, and craft 
of two and three hundred candies may be now seen daily sailing up the 
river. ‘The natives, indeed, assert that this was not brought about at 
once, but that the river has become deeper yearly. They may be relied 
on, for we know that previous to the earthquake the river was fordable for 
cattle both at Lacpat and ten miles higher up, where there is now twelve 
and fifteen feet of water. It appears to me, that the lodgment of the water 
about Sindri had served to bring this change about by keeping up a con- 
stant communication between that lake and the sea. 
In 1820, Captain D. Witson, of the Quartermaster-General’s department, 
visited the Indus about ten miles above Lacpat, and reported on a ford of 
the river which he himself had passed over at Changasir. A desire to 
verify the information he procured at that time, led me to the spot where 
he had made his observations, but I found every portion of the tract 
and the river itself altogether altered. The ford he had described, and 
to which I was led by the very guide he himself had employed, was 
covered with fifteen feet of water at low tide, and the river, instead of being 
five hundred yards wide as he had described, was only three hundred feet. 
At Bitaro, too, where he had stated it to be only thirty yards wide, I found 
it upwards of a hundred, and instead of a depth of four fathoms, little more 
