'Military Report of the Nushki-Chagai-Western Sinjarani Country' [‎90v] (185/302)

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«< begin to ride over the country sowar In the East India Company army and later Indian Army, an ordinary native cavalryman or mounted cavalryman. meshoend ’) when in floods,
instead of being confined in a channel. Courses are pointed out, but
thev are narrow and small, and the names New and Old Lora show that
these channels change ; indeed, the water which formerly flowed over
the Mengal lands at Nushki now flows over the Rakshani lands ; in short
the Barechis retained the permanent Lora water, none of which reaches
Nushki, it being drawn off at the point where the Lora comes out of
the hills, whilst the earlier Khans of Kalat got possession of the Lora
flood waters, and the Brahuis and Baluchi tribes utilize them to the
present day. ”
The various channels of the Lora, old and new, are pretty thickly
grown with tamarisk, while brushwood and coarse gra c s cover some parts
of the Dak System of postal communication used in Moghul India and later by the East India Company. . The main channel in 1881 appeared to be now here larger
than where crossed by the Nushki road, that is, about 60 yards across and
15 feet deep. The nearest point of its course to Rahman Khan’s fort in
Nushki is 12 miles west of that place. Here it makes a westerly bend
of several miles before resuming its south-westerly direction. At Landi,
about 22 miles west-south-west of Rahman Khan Kala, it is crossed by
the kifila track to the Garmsel. From here w r e know little of its further
course, except that it goes south of west and terminates in a hamun,
immediately to the east of Chagai, or Chageh, which is 107^ miles by
road from Rahman Khan Kala. Regarding the size of the Hamun,
MacGregor and Lockwood’s reconnaissance of 1877 showed that its south
ern edge is about 30 miles long, and this is probably its greatest
breadth. Its area would seem to be about 350 square miles. The Haniun
is not a marshv lake like the celebrated Hamun of the Helmand in Seistan.
It is a saline plain, more or less covered with water after floods, but some
times quite dry. The configuration of the country, so far as it is yet under
stood, is opposed to the idea that the Lora ever flow’ed further to the
westward than is now the case.
It is not every year that the Dak System of postal communication used in Moghul India and later by the East India Company. is flooded. It was not so, for instance,
in 1879-80. Floods almost invariably occur in the winter months, that
is, between October and April. It is very rare for the river to fill in
summer. When there is the least water in it, the Lora below Shorawak
is difficult to cross on account of its soft and muddy bottom, but in the
Shorawak plain, as in Pishin, the height and steepness of the scarped
banks form the chief obstacle. Floods run down as rapidly as they rise,
andean seldom stop the passage of the troops at regular crossing places,
since the bottoms of the fords are certain to be firm and stable. In the
Lora defiles, however, a moderate flood would impede, if not altogether
prevent, movement. The people of the country do not consider it safe
to take laden animals into these defiles if the weather be at all unsettled,
since the floods often descend with great rapidity and violence. In all
cases it must be remembered that the area drained by the Lora and its
tributaries is so large that local weather cannot be depended on to indicate
the likelihood or otherwise of floods.
At Band, a halting-place, 20 miles from Nushki, on the road to Shah
Ismail, is a large pond which is formed by damming the bed of a ttala
which was formerly the channel of the river Lora. The pond is 400 yards
long by from 50 to 100 yards wide, with a branch pond 500 yards long by