1840.] Account of Khyrpoor and the Fortress of Bukur. 1203 



totter. The fortifications are brick hardened in the sun, and faced with 

 large square bricks and tiles laid in mud instead of cement. Part was for- 

 merly encrusted with porcelain glazed, coloured, and ornamented with 

 Persian inscriptions. 



The once flourishing city of Bukur contains now only twenty-five 

 houses, and exhibits a deplorable picture of desolation. The British have 

 converted the governor's palace on the east wall into a powder magazine, 

 and the entire area is covered with mounds fifteen or twenty feet high of 

 bricks, the debris of buildings and ordure that have accumulated for ages.* 

 The Indus sweeps round Bukur in a rocky channel, half a mile wide, in 

 form of a horse-shoe, of which the fort occupies about the middle, and can 

 be traced in clear weather through a perfectly level country for fifty or 

 sixty miles. The stream directs its force at present against the west bank, 

 a little above Sukhur, and were it to give way, there are no obstacles to 

 oppose the course of the river over the flat plains. In event of this con- 

 tingency, and the Indus deserting Bukur, it would be valueless as a military 

 position ; and it will probably happen at no distant period, unless checked 

 by a strong embankment : the current turns now about eight miles from 

 its natural direction. 



In 1839 the Indus began to subside the last week of August, leaving 

 extensive shoals opposite the fort, which arrested reeds and timber. It 

 rose a little the three last days of the month, but six weeks afterwards 

 shoals filled above a third of the bed, and decayed vegetable matter and 

 slime, exposed to a burning sun, produced exhalations that generated 

 remittent fevers. In the end of October the river had fallen about sixteen 

 feet, and entirely deserted the NE. and SW. angles of Bukur, leaving a 

 bank on the north face, a quarter of a mile in circuit, and a shallow ford 

 alone divided the fort from the island of Khwaju-ka-than. The bank to 

 the SW. was three feet above water level, and more than a furlong in 

 circuit. The Indus appears to be forsaking its western channel, which 

 had in the beginning of November only four and a half feet water in the 

 deepest part, but the strong current could not be forded. The eastern 

 channel has a width of nearly five hundred yards, f 



* Quantities of gunpowder, amounting to a hundred pounds together, were found 

 buried in three places, and are supposed to have been introduced by the Talpoorees to 

 blow up our troops. In July 1839 a Sipahi while cooking was thrown violently on his 

 back by an explosion, but escaped without injury, though his food was projected into 

 the air. People had lighted fires on the spot for months, and that an explosion did not 

 take place before is ascribed to the dampness of the earth, which is filled with salt- 

 petre. Had the great Magazine ignited, it would have destroyed every soul in the 

 fort, and rent the fortifications to atoms. 



t Captain Thompson, the Principal Engineer of the Bengal Column of the Army of 

 the Indus, threw a flying bridge over this channel, which was swept away shortly after 



