1 840.] Account of Khyrpoor and the Fortress of Bukur. 1 1 97 



1 Eight cubits long. 



3 Seven cubits long. 



5 Ghorchu (so called from being drawn by horses) of four or five cubits. 



8 Ramjungiyo, or Jinjalls, six or seven cubits. 



3 Gobare (mortars) 2| cubits. 



Each Ghorchu requires eight horses to draw it. Most of the guns are 

 new, but would do little against a European army, and the miserable condi- 

 tion of the Sind artillery is proverbial.* The small village of Dijee is 

 surrounded by a wall and rampart twenty feet high, and seven thick at 

 the base ; it mounts six Ghorchus, but is too much decayed to offer re- 

 sistance. Two of the eight gates are closed, and the others without 

 shutters. A sheet of water, ten or twelve feet deep, and 150 or 200 yards 

 wide, which has been formed partly by digging earth for the fortifications, 

 encircles the place during the floods of the Indus, and dries up in the 

 cold months. The village contains three wells of good water, and the 

 country is cultivated on all sides except the east, where there are hills. 

 The crops are Joowaree, Bajree, and Indigo. Fuel is brought from a dis- 

 tance of two kos, and consists of tamarisk, Kimdee, and Ber, (wildbullace). 

 Ali Morad is probably entrusted with the command of Dijee because he is 

 the martial genius of the family, and can assemble between 2,000 and 

 3,000 picked warriors in two days, from villages within a circle of twenty 

 kos of his residence; they are chiefly Belooch, with some Afghans and 

 Sindees, and one-half cavalry and the other half infantry. 



The town of Bukur fills an important place in the history of Sind, and I 

 have abridged the following account of it from a work in the possession of 

 a Suyud family at Roree and Sukhur. The dates in native manuscripts 

 are often faulty, and should be received in this instance with caution. 



About the middle of the seventh century of the Hijru a Suyud of illus- 

 trious family, named Moohummud Mukaee, arrived at Bukur. He was the 

 offspring of Ameer Moohummud Soojan and a daughter of the then king 

 of Persia (a Turk), who presented him on his marriage with the tract of 

 country situated between Mushud and Kandahar. Moohummud Shoojan 

 subsequently made an expedition to the south of his principality as far as 

 the banks of the Indus, and liking the situation determined to revisit it. 

 He directed his attendants to write an account of the spot, and retraced his 

 steps to Mushud, where he died soon after, and was buried in the mau- 



* The Sindees have an exaggerated notion of the destructive power of our guns. 

 When the Ameens of Hydurabad threatened in 1838 to oppose the march of our troops, 

 a nobleman of their Court, who had heard strange accounts of our shells and shrap- 

 nells, advised them to desist, as it would be rash to attack an enemy whose cannon 

 discharge balls from both ends. 



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