INTRODUCTION, 208 



quantity of sand deposited by the wind has been so great as to cover 

 completely the whole face of the country with plateaux of deep 

 sand. These plateaux of soft deep sand, continually changing 

 their shape with every breeze, over which all trucks are obliterated 

 in a few hours, are called by the Sindhis dra-in. The dnt-ins are 

 difficult to cross, since one s feet sink deep into the sand. Only the 

 local camels can negotiate them. AVhen crossing the drchins, one 

 finds oneself in a veritable billowy sea of sand with no single scrap 

 of vegetation to vary the monotony of the brown hills. The sand 

 is disposed in beautiful irregular curves of hills and hollows ; it ia 

 impossible to cross in a straight line, the path being a series of 

 semicircles, whereby the distance is greatly lengthened in travelling 

 from one point to another. Yet after travelling thus over this. 

 1 >a rren waste for hours, one may suddenly come upon a hollow 

 rather deeper than usual, filled with vegetation and greenery. 

 Such hollows are locally known as kocliar, and there is usually damp 

 ground or perhaps a little water at their bottoms. Other still deeper 

 hollows contain shallow^ lakes or dhands (also called in this neighbour- 

 hood tith or daba). 



Although it is customary to speak of this part of Sind as a desert, 

 it is by no means so devoid of vegetation as Baluchistan. Only 

 the dra-ins are entirely barren ; the bhits and talis which cover 

 most of the country have quite a vigorous flora of their own. The 

 average rainfall at Umarkot for the three years ending 1903 was 

 6 inches, at Hyderabad the average rainfall was 7 inches ; these 

 figures being greater than those for western Sind and the Kachhi 

 district of Kalat, and nearly equal to the figures for the highlands 

 of Baluchistan. The Sind desert therefore receives quite an 

 appreciable amount of rain. Doubtless a large proportion of this 

 is lost again by evaporation, but still a certain percentage is absorbed 

 by the sand, through which it sinks downwards until it is held up 

 by the impervious alluvial clay which underlies the desert sand. 

 As a result the basal layers of desert sand are kept moist by the 

 absorbed rain-water, and yield springs in places where a deep tali 

 exposes the lower layers of the sand. There is a special term in Sindh 

 for this kind of percolating water, it is called sim water, and many 

 dhands are also termed suns, which signifies that the w r ater of these 

 particular dhands is not regarded as surface rain-water nor as flood 

 water from the Nara, but as percolating water from the lower 

 layer of desert sand. On the other hand the plain* of western 



