1206 Account of Khyrpoor and the Fortress of Buhur. [No. 108. 



part pastures sheep, herds of horned cattle, and a small breed of horses. 

 Before the British arrived in Sind, grain was so plentiful that the people 

 measured at a guess the quantity demanded by purchasers, and even now 

 about forty seers of wheat are sold on the farms for a rupee. 



The shores untouched by the plough are without paths, and the dense 

 jungle of acacia and tamarisk of large growth that overhang the water is 

 never cut, and is a serious impediment to boatmen in tracking. It would be 

 a great benefit to commerce, if the peasants were obliged to remove the 

 trees. Their villages are usually at a short distance, and they obtain 

 wood for fuel, building, and agricultural implements from the jungle, and 

 might without much additional trouble cut it on the river banks. 



The country towards lake Munchar is lower and more intersected by 

 streams than the tract to the northward, and extensive lakes and sheets of 

 water covered with lotos and rushes harbour multitudes of geese and 

 other water-fowl. Neither the domestic goose nor the duck is an habitant 

 of this region, and though the river swarms with fish there is not sufiici- 

 ent demand for it to induce people to make fish-catching a profession. 

 The common fowl is plentiful, and the people hardly know what price to 

 ask for it. They are glad to exchange their poultry for earthen platters 

 and pipes, and glass bottles of British manufacture, and our boatmen 

 were seldom without a chicken for supper. There are no alligators in the 

 Nara, but it is infested by a small leach, which is troublesome to those who 

 bathe in it. 



Shortly before the river joins lake Munchar, it flows through a channel 

 which had lately been deepened, and the earth thrown up on the banks 

 gave it the appearance of a canal, but the resemblance soon disappeared. 

 The thick groves of tamarisk exclude the air, and make the atmosphere in 

 summer oppressively close, and when the floods subside in September 

 and October the soil engenders miasma. No dew fell during the time we 

 were on the river, and our party slept in the air surrounded by swamp 

 and jungle without suffering injury. 



The people on the shores of the Nara are nearly all Moosulraans. 

 Their hamlets consist usually of small groups of cottages at short inter- 

 vals along the banks, and a sequestered spot in the vicinity, sheltered by 

 trees, is set apart for the dead, and held sacred from intrusion. The huts 

 are generally on rising ground, and built of mud with terraced roofs, on 

 which the farmers raise a chamber of reeds, where they pass the night in 

 summer to escape the suffocating heat and stings of musquitos and other 

 vermin that swarm the river. When the peasant is too poor to incur this 

 expence, he removes his mat, or bedstead, to the roof of his cottage, 

 and in situations liable to inundation, resides in a shed covered and fenced 



