352 STUDIES FOR ST V DEN 'IS 



Cutch on the southern portion of the deha of the Indus, a brief 

 account of which is given by Suess' after Cunningham, Wynne, and 

 Burnes. 



The Indus, at least since 680 A.D., has dehvered the most of its 

 water along the western side of its delta. On the extreme eastern 

 side walled off from the sea by the hilly island of Cutch, is found the 

 Runn of Cutch, a salt desert, estimated to comprise about 10,000 

 square miles in area. The great Chinese traveler Hwen Tsang, who 

 visited it in the year 641 A. D., describes the district even at that time 

 as low-lying and damp, and the ground as filled with salt. This 

 immense plain of the Runn is covered, during a southwest monsoon 

 from Lakhpat, with salt water; during the floods of the Indus with 

 fresh water, conveyed by the channels of the Banas or the Luni; at 

 other times it is dry, and is then strewn with great patches of salt of 

 dazzling whiteness. 



This region was visited in 181 9 by a violent earthquake and a low 

 mound called the Allah Bund, or "mound of God," was raised across 

 the northern side. Wynne and Suess, however, in contradistinction 

 to Burnes and Lyell, consider that the real movement was one of sub- 

 sidence of the Runn, as indicated by the fact that eight years after the 

 earthquake the Indus burst its banks in upper Sind, flowed across the 

 Allah Bund, which thus offered no obstacle to its progress, and spread 

 over the Runn of Cutch. 



Without attempting to sharply discriminate between variable delta- 

 building and variable subsidence in this disputed case, it remains as 

 the most striking instance of how, for more than a thousand years, 

 portions of a delta surface the major part of which is land may be 

 covered by the sea. Here the alternation of fresh- and salt-water 

 iioods with seasons of aridity is not representative of pluvial climates, 

 but depends upon, first, the small rainfall of the region; second, the 

 southwest monsoon which raises the sea-level slightly during one sea- 

 son; and, third, the river floods produced by a period of rains in 

 distant mountains. 



Under more usual circumstances the reach of the ocean waters,, 

 which now spread periodically over the Runn, would doubtless be 

 greatly diminished, since in the course of the six hours between high 



I Das Antlitz der Erde, Eng. trans., Vol. I, pp 40-47. 



