554 Wood's Report on the River Indus. [No. 115. 



occurs in the Indian month Visukh, answering to our March. It is 

 held in honour of the peer, afer whom the place is named; the 

 fair lasts five days, and pilgrims from India's furthest shores come to 

 prostrate themselves at the tomb of Sakhi Surwar. Few come from 

 the countries west of the Suliman range ; and the followers of Brama 

 out-number those of Mahomed ; the aggregate of both cannot be much 

 under 100,000 souls. Though commerce is not neglected, there is 

 but little business done. 



A Khorassan or Afghan horse-dealer may now and then exchange 

 an animal of his stud for the productions of India, or the manufacture 

 of Europe ; but this Mela is essentially an assemblage for devotional 

 and pleasurable purposes ; but with such a material, and the example 

 of the holy Mecca, it is easy to fortel that (when the fair is establish- 

 ed,) many individuals in this annual concourse of devotees will become 

 as enterprizing merchants as they are now zealous and bigotted 

 fakeers. Sakhi Surwar is twenty-four koss nearly direct west of 

 Deera Ghazee Khan ; it is a considerable town situated in the mouth 

 of the pass. Firewood is abundant, and a mountain rivulet supplies 

 the town with water. At Peer Adul Zeearat, seven koss in a N. W. 

 direction from Dera Ghazee Khan, a fair is held in February, similar 

 to that of Sakhi Surwar. 



Dera Ismail Khan is never inundated from the river, but is yearly 

 flooded by mountain torrents. The present town lies about a mile 

 back from the river, and was built about eight years ago, when the 

 old Dera was washed into the Indus. Dera Ismail Khan is well planned, 

 and when its skeleton streets are filled with occupants, they, for width 

 and cleanness, will match with those of most eastern towns. The 

 houses are of mud or sun-dried brick, terrace roofed, and rise from 

 a ground platform of from one to two feet high. Few are of more 

 than one story. When I passed through it in the middle of summer, 

 the bazar was well frequented ; but in the winter months it is much more 

 thronged. The town is a sort of nucleus or rallying point for those 

 pastoral tribes of Affghanistan, who prefer a clement winter in the 

 valley of the Indus, to the security of that which characterizes that of 

 the mountain districts of their own land. Carriage is thus almost 

 unlimited, as some of the tribes rear camels for no other purpose than to 

 put them out to hire. The Lohanasy who from before the time of Baber 



