'Travels in Beloochistan and Sinde; accompanied by a geographical and historical account of those countries, with a map.' [‎239] (281/476)

ROUTE TO SHEERAZ. ' ggg
\t}i June, We left our halting-place this morning at four a. w.,
and proceeded over a fertile and highly improved level tract, twenty
miles ; at the twelfth ot which is a neat village named Kunjan ; and
three miles in advance from it we passed a bridge over the Bund
Umeer river * (here called, by the natives, the Koolbar). The culti
vation of rice in this plain is inconceivably great, and my fellow
travellers informed me that these districts were admitted to be by far
the richest and cheapest in the Persian empire ; a distinction to
which they bear sufficient evidence of their claim, as I could at one
time distinctly count upwards of thirty towns and villages entirely
encompassed, and connected with each other by tilled ground. The
road was excellent throughout; but there are numerous small bridges
built over the canals, that intersect the plain in every direction for
the purposes ol irrigation, that, if broken down, would (for a time at
least) obstruct all intercourse. Some of these canals are thirty and
forty feet deep, and usually not more than five or six in breadth.
Ihe bridge over the Bund Umeer is (like every other work of that
kind that I saw in Persia) in a state of ruin, and must very shortly
fall in. When I crossed it, there were many large apertures through
the payement ol it, across which some one had laid branches of trees
to warn travellers at night. It consists of twelve arches, and the
river has a most beautiful appearance from the top of it, gliding down
between vast districts of rice cultivation, and diffusing plenty over
the soil.
Since landing at Sonmeany, 1 had now performed a journey of
upwards of one thousand five hundred miles, of which thirteen hun-
* The Bund Umeer river, or the river of the dyke of the Noble, is so called from a
Bund, or dyke, built across it about eight centuries ago by the Umeer Azad ood Doulee,
in the reign of U1 Kadir, the twenty-fifth Khalipha of the house of the Abbassides.
This Bund was formed for the purpose of confining the waters to one channel, until
they entered the plain of Meerdusht, in which the ruins of Persipolis stand, whence
they are diverted by canals all over the face of the country.