Eastern Branch of the River Indus and Runn. 583 
most western and Lacpat or eastern branch, and isin all probability the one through which 
ALEXANDER passed to the ocean the second time, and through which he intended his fleet 
to sail. The description given of this branch is quite characteristic of many of the 
mouths of the Indus, as being at its mouth like a “ bay in the sea,” for some of the 
rivers lose themselves in fens and swamps, sometimes forming lakes which communicate 
with the sea by small openings. I take it for granted that ALEXANDER never sailed down 
the Pharran or Céri branch of the Indus, on which the preceding memoir treats ; for it 
leaves the parent stream as high up as Bhacar, one hundred and seventy miles and 
upwards from the sea. It is not even mentioned by ArRIAN, and may be an excres- 
cence from the main trunk of a later date than the days of the Greeks, and brought 
about, perhaps, like the inundation of November 1826, by the bursting of a band, such 
as Arrére. Nor has the Lacpat branch any resemblance to the one described by 
Arrian, for it widens greatly at its mouth, and has no small opening to the sea, and had 
ALEXANDER passed through the Wdnydné branch, he must have extended his voyage 
out to sea before he could reach Cutch; for the entrance to the two grand branches on 
which Shahbander and Bé are situated, is not visible from Cutch, and I speak on this 
point from personal observation. 
There is one other fact to which I shall allude before quitting this interesting subject. 
ARRIAN mentions a nation on the Indus, called * Sangada or Saranga,” and v’ ANVILLE 
has supposed the country of the Sangada to be the same as the modern ‘* Sangada, or 
country of the Sangarians,”’ whose modern capital, according to RENNELL, is Noanagar, 
on the south coast of the gulf of Cutch, and who, further coinciding with p’ANVILLE, 
conceives that the ‘* Sangarians must have first removed from the western to the eastern 
side of the Indus, and afterwards must have also crossed the gulf of Cutch.” In the 
province of Cutch, and about thirty miles eastward of the Pharrdn river there is a 
town on the sea-coast, called Jacow, inhabited chiefly by a race of people, called Sungars, 
who have a well-founded tradition that they came from the west, and in ALEXANDER’s 
time they were perhaps westward of the Indus, and the same people whom Nerarcaus 
mentions to have encountered the Macedonian hero on his road to Gedrosia, between the 
rivers Indus and Arabius. 
That ALEXANDER’s fleet never saw Cutch is clear, for it must have sailed out of the 
grand western branch of the Indus, and Nearcuus’ description of the harbour of Crocala, 
near the port of ALEXANDER, which he came to when only one hundred and fifty stadia 
from the place of his departure, agrees exactly, it has been said, with Cardchi.. If the 
admiral had sailed out of the eastern branch, he must have passed along the whole 
delta, which would give an additional distance of eighteen hundred stadia, and this he ne- 
ver did; yet ALExANDER’s reason for sending his fleet by the branch which he had found 
the safest and best, is no where explained by Arrian. 
The river Indus is so constantly subject to alterations, in particular towards the sea, 
that it must ever be fruitless to attempt the identification of any of its branches with 
what they appeared to the Greeks, unless in general features ; and any one may, without 
fear of contradiction or comment, fix on the opening to the sea of any of its numerous 
