Jūna Chhotan.
Nagar Gurha.
Here terminate our remarks on the thals of western Marwar, which, sterile as it is by the hand of Nature, had its miseries completed by the famine that raged generally throughout these regions in S. 1868 (A.D. 1812), and of which this[[32]] is the third year. The disorders which we have depicted as prevailing at the seat of government for the last thirty years, have left these remote regions entirely to the mercy of the desert tribes [304], or their own scarce less lawless lords: in fact, it only excites our astonishment how man can vegetate in such a land, which has nothing but a few sars, or salt-lakes, to yield any profit to the proprietors, and the excellent camel pastures, more especially in the southern tracts, which produce the best breed in the desert.
[1]. The journals of all these routes, with others of Central and Western India, form eleven moderate-sized folio volumes, from which an itinerary of these regions might be constructed. It was my intention to have drawn up a more perfect and detailed map from these, but my health forbids the attempt. They are now deposited in the archives of the Company, and may serve, if judiciously used, to fill up the only void in the great map of India, executed by their commands.
[2]. [Kānod Mohindargarh in Patiāla State (IGI, xvii. 385).]
[3]. It left Delhi October 13, 1808.
[4]. “Our marches,” says Mr. Elphinstone, “were seldom very long. The longest was twenty-six miles, and the shortest fifteen; but the fatigue which our people suffered bore no proportion to the distance. Our line, when in the closest order, was two miles long. The path by which we travelled wound much, to avoid the sand-hills. It was too narrow to allow of two camels going abreast; and if an animal stepped to one side, it sunk in the sand as in snow,” etc. etc.—Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, ed. 1842, vol. i. p. 11.
[5]. [In Sind, on the N. shore of the Great Rann, about 10 miles from Nagar-Pārkar.]
[6]. Trikuta, the epithet bestowed on the rock on which the castle of Jaisalmer is erected.