These blessings, which nature had bestowed on this otherwise barren region, perished with the battle of Jarra; for the Sindian chief, irritated at the unsuccessful result of his expedition, returned to his country full of vengeance, and inflicted the deepest injury on the country which he had failed to humble. At the village of Mora he threw up a mound of earth, or, as it is called, a “bund,” across that branch of the Indus which fertilised Cutch, and by thus turning the stream, which so much benefited its inhabitants, to flow into other branches of the river, and by leading it through canals to desert portions of his own dominions, he at once destroyed a large and rich tract of irrigated land, and converted a productive rice country, which had belonged to Cutch, into a sandy desert.
Injury of the “bund” or dam, on the tract near.
The mound which had been raised, did not entirely exclude the water of the Indus from Cutch; but so impeded the progress of the main stream, that all agriculture depending on irrigation ceased. In process of time this trivial remnant of prosperity disappeared, and the Talpoors, who succeeded the Kaloras in the government of Sinde, threw up other mounds; and about the year 1802, the erection of one at Ali Bunder excluded the waters of the Indus, even at the period of inundation, from the channel which had once conveyed them past Cutch to the sea. Since then, the stripe of land which once formed the fertile district of Sayra ceased to yield a blade of vegetation, and became a part of the Run of Cutch, on which it had formerly bordered. The channel of the river at the town of Lucput shallowed[31]; and, above Sindree, filled with mud, and dried up. Lower down it changed into an arm of the sea, and was flooded at every tide.
The Raos, or Princes of Cutch, possessed at one time military stations in three different places of Sinde,—Budeenu, Ballyaree, and Raomaka-bazar,—yet they submissively bore these indignities, as well to their own detriment as that of their subjects. They used no exertion to recover that which nature had bestowed on their country, or to wipe off those injuries which had been offered, at variance, as they no doubt were, with the law of nations, which requires “that different nations ought, in time of peace, to do one another all the good they can, and in time of war, as little harm as possible, without prejudice to their own real interests.”[32]
Earthquake of 1819 overwhelms Sindree: forms a lake.
In this state of indifference, there occurred, in June, 1819, a severe shock of an earthquake, by which some hundreds of the inhabitants of Cutch perished, and every fortified stronghold in the country was shaken to its foundations. Wells and rivulets without number changed from fresh to salt water; but these were trifling alterations, compared with those which took place in the eastern branch of the Indus, and the adjacent country. At sunset, the shock was felt at Sindree, the station at which the Cutch Government levied their customs, situated on the high road from Cutch to Sinde, and on the banks of what had been once the eastern branch of the Indus. The little brick fort of 150 feet square, which had been built there for the protection of merchandise, was overwhelmed by an inundating torrent of water from the ocean, which spread on every side, and, in the course of a few hours, converted the tract, which had before been hard and dry, into an inland lake, which extended for sixteen miles on either side of Sindree. The houses within the walls filled with water, and eight years afterwards I found fish in the pools among them. The only dry spot was the place on which the bricks had fallen upon one another. One of four towers only remained, and the custom-house officers had saved their lives by ascending it, and were eventually transported to dry land by boats on the following day.[33]
Raises up a mound called “Ullah bund.”
But it was soon discovered that this was not the only alteration in this memorable convulsion of nature; as the inhabitants of Sindree observed, at a distance of five miles northward, a mound of earth or sand, in a place where the soil was previously low and level. It extended east and west for a considerable distance, and passed immediately across the channel of the Indus, separating as it were for ever the Phurraun river from the sea. The natives called this mound by the name of “Ullah bund,” or the mound of God, in allusion to its not being, like the other dams of the Indus, a work of man, but a dam thrown up by nature.
These wonderful events passed unheeded by the inhabitants; for the deep injury which had been inflicted on Cutch in 1762 had so thoroughly ruined that part of the country, that it was a matter of indifference whether it continued a desert, or became an inland lake. A feeble and unsuccessful attempt was made by Cutch to establish a Custom-house on the newly raised dam of “Ullah bund,” but to this the Ameers of Sinde objected, and Sindree being no longer tenable, the officers were withdrawn to the mainland of Cutch.
An overflow of the Indus destroys it in 1826.