Arriving at Parkar on the 28th February, and finding the inhabitants charitable, we were reduced to the necessity of begging victuals; and actually procured four mahmoodies by that means, equal to as many shillings.  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