Elevation of the Ullah Bund.—Immediately after the shock, the inhabitants of Sindree saw, at the distance of five miles and a half from their village, a long elevated mound, where previously there had been a low and perfectly level plain. (See Map, [fig. 71].) To this uplifted tract they gave the name of "Ullah Bund," or the "Mound of God," to distinguish it from several artificial dams previously thrown across the eastern arm of the Indus.
Extent of country raised.—It has been ascertained that this new-raised country is upwards of fifty miles in length from east to west, running parallel to that line of subsidence before mentioned, which caused the grounds around Sindree to be flooded. The range of this elevation extends from Puchum Island towards Gharee; its breadth from north to south is conjectured to be in some parts sixteen miles, and its greatest ascertained height above the original level of the delta is ten feet,—an elevation which appears to the eye to be very uniform throughout.
For several years after the convulsion of 1819, the course of the Indus was very unsettled, and at length, in 1826, the river threw a vast body of water into its eastern arm, that called the Phurraun, above Sindree; and forcing its way in a more direct course to the sea, burst through all the artificial dams which had been thrown across its channel, and at length cut right through the "Ullah Bund," whereby a natural section was obtained. In the perpendicular cliffs thus laid open Sir A. Burnes found that the upraised lands consisted of clay filled with shells. The new channel of the river where it intersected the "bund" was eighteen feet deep, and forty yards in width; but in 1828 the channel was still farther enlarged. The Indus, when it first opened this new passage, threw such a body of water into the new mere, or salt lagoon, of Sindree, that it became fresh for many months; but it had recovered its saltness in 1828, when the supply of river-water was less copious, and finally it became more salt than the sea, in consequence, as the natives suggested to Sir A. Burnes, of the saline particles with which the "Runn of Cutch" is impregnated.
In 1828 Sir A. Burnes went in a boat to the ruins of Sindree, where a single remaining tower was seen in the midst of a wide expanse of sea. The tops of the ruined walls still rose two or three feet above the level of the water; and standing on one of these, he could behold nothing in the horizon but water, except in one direction, where a blue streak of land to the north indicated the Ullah Bund. This scene presents to the imagination a lively picture of the revolutions now in progress on the earth—a waste of waters where a few years before all was land, and the only land visible consisting of ground uplifted by a recent earthquake.
Ten years after the visit of Sir A. Burnes above alluded to, my friend, Captain Grant, F. G. S., of the Bombay Engineers, had the kindness to send at my request a native surveyor to make a plan of Sindree and Ullah Bund, in March, 1838. From his description it appears that, at that season, the driest of the whole year, he found the channel traversing the Bund to be 100 yards wide, without water, and incrusted with salt. He was told that it has now only four or five feet of water in it after rains. The sides or banks were nearly perpendicular, and nine feet in height. The lagoon has diminished both in area and depth, and part near the fort was dry land. The annexed drawing, made by Captain Grant from the surveyor's plan, shows the appearance of the fort in the midst of the lake, as seen in 1838 from the west, or from the same point as that from which Captain Grindlay's sketch (see [fig. 72]) was taken in 1808, before the earthquake.
View of the Fort of Sindree, from the west, in March, 1838.
The Runn of Cutch is a flat region of a very peculiar character, and no less than 7000 square miles in area: a greater superficial extent than Yorkshire, or about one-fourth the area of Ireland. It is not a desert of moving sand, nor a marsh, but evidently the dried-up bed of an inland sea, which for a great part of every year has a hard and dry bottom uncovered by weeds or grass, and only supporting here and there a few tamarisks. But during the monsoons, when the sea runs high, the salt-water driven up from the Gulf of Cutch and the creeks at Luckput overflows a large part of the Runn, especially after rains, when the soaked ground permits the sea-water to spread rapidly. The Runn is also liable to be overflowed occasionally in some parts by river-water: and it is remarkable that the only portion which was ever highly cultivated (that anciently called Sayra) is now permanently submerged. The surface of the Runn is sometimes incrusted with salt about an inch in depth, in consequence of the evaporation of the sea-water. Islands rise up in some parts of the waste, and the boundary lands form bays and promontories. The natives have various traditions respecting the former separation of Cutch and Sinde by a bay of the sea, and the drying up of the district called the Runn. But these tales, besides the usual uncertainty of oral tradition, are farther obscured by mythological fictions. The conversion of the Runn into land is chiefly ascribed to the miraculous powers of a Hindoo saint, by name Damorath (or Dhoorunnath), who had previously done penance for twelve years on the summit of Denodur hill. Captain Grant infers, on various grounds, that this saint flourished about the eleventh or twelfth century of our era. In proof of the drying up of the Runn, some towns far inland are still pointed out as having once been ancient ports. It has, moreover, been always said that ships were wrecked and engulphed by the great catastrophe; and in the jets of black muddy water thrown out of fissures in that region, in 1819, there were cast up numerous pieces of wrought-iron and ship nails.[643] Cones of sand six or eight feet in height were at the same time thrown up on these lands.[644]
We must not conclude without alluding to a moral phenomenon connected with this tremendous catastrophe, which we regard as highly deserving the attention of geologists. It is stated by Sir A. Burnes, that "these wonderful events passed unheeded by the inhabitants of Cutch;" for the region convulsed, though once fertile, had for a long period been reduced to sterility by want of irrigation, so that the natives were indifferent as to its fate. Now it is to this profound apathy which all but highly civilized nations feel, in regard to physical events not having an immediate influence on their worldly fortunes, that we must ascribe the extraordinary dearth of historical information concerning changes of the earth's surface, which modern observations show to be by no means of rare occurrence in the ordinary course of nature.