72 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
the entrance at Cochin, remaining open for navigation all the year 
round. 
At Cochin there is always 11 feet of water at low water on the 
bar ; but I hope that 20 feet will be attained by the works now 
projected, which will make Cochin by far the best harbour in the 
south of India. 
The two mud banks I am going to describe are most valuable 
adjuncts to Cochin. Narrakal is about five miles to the north, and 
Allippey nearly forty miles to the south. 
Allijppey is the better known of the two, and I therefore take it 
first. In an old book (I believe on the voyages of Captain Cope) 
Allippey is mentioned in a way which proves that its peculiarities 
and advantages have been long known and appreciated. For this 
fact — and indeed for almost all I know of the mud bank — I am 
indebted to information obtained from Mr Crawford, the com- 
mercial agent for the state of Travancore, a shrewd Scotchman, 
who resides at the thriving and busy town of Allippey, and 
occupies a position of great responsibility. The bank is spoken 
of in that book as “ Mud Bay,” and described as one of the most 
extraordinary harbours in the world. 
From Hamilton’s account of the East Indies, in Pinkerton’s 
collection of “ Voyages and Travels ” (1673 to 1723), it is thus 
spoken of, according to a report by Mr Maltby, the resident in 
1860 
“ Mud Bay is a place that, I believe, few can parallel in the 
world. It lies on the shore of St Andrea, about half a league out 
in the sea, and is open to the wide ocean, and has neither island 
nor bank to break off the force of the billows, which come rolling 
with great violence on all other parts of the coast in the south-west 
monsoon, but on the bank of mud lose themselves in a moment ; 
and ships lie on it as secure as in the best harbour, without motion 
or disturbance. It reaches about a mile along shore, and has shifted 
from the northward, in thirty years, about three miles.” 
There is some discrepancy in the statements of the movements 
of the bank in former times as to whether it moved from north to 
south or from south to north ; but there can be no doubt about the 
last movement, since it has taken place during Mr Crawford’s resi- 
dence at Allippey. 
