About five-and-twenty miles below Mull we meet the Seer mouth of the Indus, but have salt instead of fresh water. There are several minor creeks that intervene, but they do not form any communication. The Seer is one of the destroyed branches of the Indus. A dam has been thrown across it below Mughribee, fifty miles from its mouth; and though it ceases to be a running stream on that account, the superfluity of fresh water from above forces for itself a passage by small creeks till it regains the Seer, which thus contains fresh water twenty miles from its mouth, though it is but a creek of the sea. The river immediately below Mughribee is named Goongra; higher up it is called Pinyaree, and leaves the parent stream between Hydrabad and Tatta. The Seer is accessible to boats of 150 candies (38 tons) to a place called Gunda, where they load from the flat-bottomed boats of Mughribee. With some extra labour, these same boats could reach the dam of Mughribee; and from that town the inland navigation for flat-bottomed boats is uninterrupted to the main Indus, though it becomes more difficult in the dry season. The dam of Mughribee is forty feet broad. The Seer at its mouth is about two miles wide, but it gets very narrow in ascending; within, it has a depth of four and six fathoms, but below Gunda there is a sand bank with but one fathom water on it. There is a considerable trade carried on from this branch of the Indus with the neighbouring countries of Cutch and Kattywar; for rice, the staple of Sinde, is to be had in abundance at Mughribee.
The Koree, or eastern mouth.
The Koree, or eastern branch of the Indus, completes the eleven mouths of the river. It once discharged a portion of the waters of the Fulailee that passes Hydrabad, as also of a branch that quits the Indus near Bukkur, and traverses the desert during the swell; but it has been closed against both these since the year 1762, when the Sindians threw up bunds, or dams, to inflict injury on their rivals, the inhabitants of Cutch.[21] Of all the mouths of the Indus the Koree gives the grandest notion of a mighty river. A little below Lucput it opens like a funnel, and at Cotasir is about seven miles wide, and continues to increase till the coasts of Cutch and Sinde are not visible from one another. When the water here was fresh it must have been a noble stream. The depth of this arm of the sea (for it can be called by no other name) is considerable. We had twenty feet of water as high as Cotasir, and it continues equally deep to Busta, which is but eight miles from Lucput. A Company’s cruiser once ascended as high as Cotasir; but it is considered dangerous, for there is an extensive sand bank at the mouth called Adheearee, on which the water at low tide is only knee deep. There are also several sand banks between it and Cotasir, and a large one opposite that place. The Koree does not communicate with the Seer or any other mouth of the Indus, but it sends off a back water to Cutch, and affords a safe inland navigation to small craft from Lucput to Juckow on the Indian Ocean, at the mouth of the gulf of Cutch.
Advantages of these to Sinde.
The Sindians, it will therefore appear, have choked both eastern branches. There being no communication by the Indus and the Koree, the trade of Sinde is not exported by it. It finds a vent by the Seer; but this has not given rise to any new town being built on its banks. Such, indeed, is the humidity, that this country is only tenable for a part of the year.
The sea outside the Indus; its dangers.
We here complete the enumeration and description of the mouths of the Indus. Out from them the sea is shallow; but the soundings are regular, and a vessel will have from twelve to fifteen feet of water a mile and a half off shore. The Gora bank presents the only difficulty to the navigation of these coasts, from Mandivee, in Cutch, to Curachee. Breakers are to be traced along it for twelve miles. The sailors clear it by stretching at once out of sight of land, and keeping in twelve fathoms’ water till the danger is over: they even state that a vessel of twenty-five tons would be wrecked on a course where the depth is ten fathoms. This bank is much resorted to by fishermen; and it may generally be distinguished by their boats and nets.
Coast of Sinde exposed.
The coast of Sinde, from its entire exposure to the Indian ocean, is so little protected against storms, that the navigation is much sooner suspended than in the neighbouring countries. Few vessels approach it after March; for the south-west monsoon, which then partially commences, so raises the sea that the waves break in three and four fathoms water, while the coast is not discernible from its lowness till close upon it, and there is a great risk of missing the port, and no shelter at hand, in such an event.
Tides of the Indus.