108 Capt. Macmurdo on tlie Earthquake at Cutcli 
day, (the chieftain stated), it was found rent and shattered, as 
if something within had sunk ; and the spot where the fire-ball 
was supposed to have fallen, bore marks of fire in the scorched 
vegetation. 
The rivers in Cutch are generally dry, (except in the mon- 
soon), or have very little water in them. Native accounts seem 
to confirm the fact of almost the whole of their beds having been 
filled to their banks for a period of a few minutes, and accord- 
ing to some for half an hour. They are said to have subsided 
gradually. This convulsion of nature has affected the eastern 
and almost deserted channel of the river Indus, which bounds 
Cutch to the westward, and the Runn or desert, and the swamp 
called the Bhunnee, which isolates the province on the north, in a 
more remarkable manner than it has any other part of the coun- 
try. I myself have seen this branch of the Indus forded at 
Luckput, containing water for a few hundred yards about a foot 
deep ; this was when the tide was at ebb, and when at flood the 
depth of the channel was never more than six feet, and about 
eighty or one hundred yards in breadth ; the rest of the channel 
at flood was not covered in any place with more than one or 
two feet of water. This branch of the river Indus, or, as it 
may with more propriety be termed, inlet of the sea has since 
the earthquake deepened at the fort of Luckput to more than 
eighteen feet at low water, and on sounding the channel it has 
been found to contain from four to ten feet from the Cutch to 
the Sindh shore, a distance of three or four miles. The Ali- 
bund has been damaged, a circumstance that has re-admitted of 
a navigation which had been closed for centuries. The goods 
of Sindh are embarked in craft near Buhima Bazar and Kanjee 
Kacote, and which, sailing across the Bhunnee and Runn, land 
their cargoes at a town called Kurra, on the north of Cutch. 
The Runn, which extends from Luckput round the north of 
this province to its eastern boundary, is not at present fordable 
of this description, with the view of proving that meteoric stones are nof truly me- 
teoric, but are of tellurian formation, having been projected from the interior of the 
earth. This improbable hypothesis is advanced in a work lately published in Ger. 
many. — Ed. 
* It is many years since the eastern branch of the Indus has been almost de- 
serted by the waters of the rivei’. 
