576 Lieutenant Burnes’ Memoir on the 
Itunn passes nearly across from Juttawarra to Fatihgad ; indeed, I question 
if at some period this may not have been detached altogether from Wagar, 
and rejoined by a decrease or recession of the water. Its present position is 
almost that ofan island, and I cannot help thinking that this goes very far 
to elucidate the causes which may have detached Cutch from Sinde, and 
that the tract which lay once between these countries was of this description, 
low, and without hills. Wherever there is an island or piece of dry land 
in the Runn, it is invariably rocky and hilly: now these are precisely the 
parts which it would be most difficult to have swept away, and which con- 
sequently remain, as, I believe, memorials of a once more hospitable region 
than that by which they are now environed. 
Between Gujarat and Cutch the Runn is very narrow. At Addisir it is 
only a mile and a-half broad, and at Vowd, where the coast is more depressed 
than at that place, it is but eight miles wide. This channel, however, 
cannot be said to separate the one country from the other, as the island of 
Chorar intervenes. ‘This is a low tract of land, with but few rising grounds, 
and on which there are now many villages; it has no doubt been under 
water, and involved in the same catastrophe as the Runn at a former period. 
This is proved by a deposit of shells and marine matter found on the 
northern side of the island, and which is called by Europeans Ducarwarra 
marble. I understand it is a carbonate of lime, with other substances 
mixed; it has a red and yellow petrified appearance, and is susceptible 
of a tolerably good polish. 
In fact, as both the grand openings into the Renn from the Gulf of Cutch 
and eastern mouth of the Indus give access to the sea-water at the present 
day, during the south- westerly winds, and as the bodies of water so impelled 
up meet in the Iwan, should there be heavy rain to moisten it, and assist 
the winds (as afterwards explained), I look upon this conclusion to be 
obvious, that between Cutch and Sinde, at some period or other, there inter- 
vened an inland sea, which was navigable, and that there are circumstances 
in the present appearance and state of the country, which do not render it 
improbable that this inland sea was formed by an influx of water from the 
ocean consequent on some convulsion of nature.* 
* See note O. 
