394 Roree in Khyrpoor. [No. 113. 



cloned by the stream, date and peepul trees grow luxuriantly, and rocks 

 worn by the water, and shattered and broken into gigantic masses, were 

 submerged at no very remote period. Along the base of the hills, on both 

 banks of the river, the land bears the appearance of having been under 

 water. The remains of a stone and brick wall, or quarry, built evidently 

 to oppose the encroachments of the river, runs along the edge of the 

 precipitous ridge which supports the town, and under it is an extensive 

 cavern. Clay buttresses shore up the houses, which rise to four and five 

 stories, and being composed of frail materials and badly built, threaten 

 momentarily to topple over into the great road leading to the watering 

 place, which is usually thronged with people. 



The inhabitants affirm that the periodical rains have failed the last 

 twenty years, and that the river rises less annually. An old Bunneah 

 pointed to a spot, which he recollects to have seen covered by the river, 

 and is now removed at least six feet above its level in the floods. To 

 this cause partly, the people attribute the decline of the prosperity of 

 Sind, and the extortions of the Talpoor Beloochees and the large ex- 

 pense incurred in digging canals and cuts for irrigation, swallow up 

 the entire produce of their industry. 



The Bunneah remembers upwards of fifty houses in Roree, being 

 washed down about twenty years since by rain, and I can easily fancy 

 the havoc a storm would make among the frail and ruined tenements in 

 the town. The Indus rose, within his recollection, ten or twelve feet 

 higher than it does now; for the last four years scarcely any rain has 

 fallen, and grain has become progressively dearer, but there was a plenti- 

 ful supply in 1839, compared with the quantity that fell in the preceding 

 seasons. 



The lime ridge behind Roree is without a blade of vegetation, it 

 swells into peaks and eminences, and stretches several miles inland, and 

 along the river, to the south. Some of the hills are isolated, — and inter- 

 sected by little valleys, and some are capped by tombs, shrines, and other 

 buildings in ruins. These parched and arid hills are in powerful con- 

 trast with the deep verdure of date groves and bajree fields that are 

 scattered in rich luxuriance over the low grounds towards the capital of 

 the principality. The ledgah of Roree is about five hundred feet above 

 the river, and few spots in the Eastern world surpass the view from it in 

 beauty, and present a greater variety of objects. In front of the spectator 

 are two picturesque little islands ; the one covered with date palms, the 

 other with tombs and mausolea, shooting up into innumerable pointed 

 spires of glazed porcelain. The fort of Bukur, beyond it, embraces a 



