Burnes, Alexander: Travels into Bokhara: containing the narrative of a voyage on the Indus from the sea to Lahore, ... and an account of a journey from India to Cabool, Tartary and Persia ; performed by order of the supreme government of India, in the years 1831, 32, and 33 (Band 1) (London, 1835)

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MEMOIR OF THE INDUS.

CHAP. XVII.

had been built there for the protection of merchan-
dise, 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.*

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 con-
siderable 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.

* Since my return to England, I have been so fortunate as
to procure a view of Sindree, as it existed in the year 1808,
from a sketch by Captain Grindlay, who visited it at that time.
It has been engraved for this work, and faces Chap. XVII.
Captain Grindlay's observations on Sindree follow in a note.