CHAP. 4.] . EARTHqUAKES. 31 



provincej that has been either seen or heard of^ which would from its recent 

 volcanic appearance at all support belief in the assertions of fire and 

 smoke having issued from the ground. 



The dry beds of the Kutch rivers are said to have been all filled to 



their banks for a short time^ " the water having 

 Eivei's flooded. 



the color and taste of the soil, from which it 



would appear to have been forced. Many wells which had been fresh, 

 became salt, and vice versa." This part of the account may have a 

 better foundation than that about the bursting forth of fire ; and it may 

 be that the lower portions of the river courses only are meant. Very 

 many of the Kutch rocks are retentive of water; and the undulatino- 

 motion of the ground may have produced so much compression that this 

 water was forced from places where it had lodged, somewhat in the same 

 way as occurred recently at Caehar {vide Notes by T. Oldham, Esq. 

 LL.D., Superintendent, Geol. Surv., on the earthquake of January 

 10th, 1869, at Caehar. Proc, Asiat. Soc, Bengal, April 1869). 



But more lasting changes than these took place : — Formerly a con- 

 siderable arm of the river Indus, called the Korea, traversino- the delta 

 , found its way to the sea at the eastern extre- 



Other chausres and ^-^uxk, 



foi-mer couditiou of mity of Kutch, and its annual inundations 



" Sajra. 



watered the low ground north of Lukput, then 

 called " Sayra^^ (? Sahra), a fertile rice -producing country. Protracted 

 feuds which long existed between the Governments of Sind and Kutch 

 led to the great battle of Jarra, fought upon the heights overlookino- 

 the Runn at that place, south-east of Lukput, and shortly afterwards 

 (about the year 1764) to the construction of a bund across the 

 Koree, in the Sind territory, by Ghulam Shah. The fresh water 

 being thus stopped and led elsewhere, " Sayra" became a sandy desert ; 

 other bunds continued to be built, but the fresh water was not quite 

 arrested until about the year 1802, when this was so efiectually accom- 

 plished by one erected at Ali Bunder, that even the inundations of the 



( 31 ) 



