But Having The Good Fortune To Meet A Banian Of Ahmedabad,
Whom I Had Formerly Known, He Relieved Me And My Men.
We were five days
in travelling from Parkar to Rhadunpoor, where I arrived on the 19th
March, and went thence to Ahmedabad on the 2d April, after an absence of
111 days.
Thence to Brodia and Barengeo, thence sixteen c. to Soquatera,
and ten c. to Cambay. We here crossed the large river, which is seven
coss in breadth,[100] and where many hundreds are swallowed up yearly.
On the other side of the river we came to Saurau,[101] where is a town
and castle of the razbootches or rajputs. The 16th of April I
travelled twenty-five coss to Broach. The 17th I passed the river
[Narbuddah], and went ten c. to Cossumba; and on the 18th thirteen c.
to Surat.
[Footnote 100: The great river in the text is assuredly the upper part
of the gulf of Cambay, where the tide sets in with prodigious rapidity,
entering almost at once with a vast wave or bore, as described on a
former occasion in the Portuguese voyages. - E.]
[Footnote 101: Probably Sarrode, on the south side of the entry of the
river Mahy. - E.]
According to general report, there is no city of greater trade in all
the Indies than Tatta in Sinde; its chief port being Larry Bunder, three
days journey nearer the mouth of the river. There is a good road without
the river's mouth, said to be free from worms; which, about Surat
especially, and in other parts of India, are in such abundance, that
after three or four months riding, were it not for the sheathing, ships
would be rendered incapable of going to sea. The ports and roads of
Sinde are said to be free. From Tatta they go in two months by water to
Lahore, and return down the river in one. The commodities there are
baffatys, stuffs, lawns [muslins], coarse indigo, not so good as
that of Biana. Goods, may be carried from Agra on camels in twenty days
to Bucker on the river Indus, and thence in fifteen or sixteen days
aboard the ships at the mouth of the Indus. One may travel as soon from
Agra to Sinde as to Surat, but there is more thieving on the Sinde road,
in spite of every effort of the Mogul government to prevent it.
The inhabitants of Sinde consist mostly of Rajputs, Banians, and
Baloches, the governors of the cities and large towns being Moguls. The
country people are rude; going naked from the waist upwards, and wear
turbans quite different from the fashion of the Moguls. Their arms are
swords, bucklers, and lances; their bucklers being large and shaped like
bee-hives, in which they are in use to give their camels drink, and
their horses provender. Their horses are good, strong, and swift, and
though unshod, they ride them furiously, backing them at a year old. The
Rajputs eat no beef or buffalo flesh, even worshipping them; and the
Moguls say that the Rajputs know how to die as well as any in the world.
The Banians kill nothing, and are said to be divided into more than
thirty different casts, that differ somewhat among them in matters of
religion, and may not eat with each other.
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