Note 48 — THE VOYAGE OF NEARKHOS.

The Arabis or Purâli discharges its waters into the bay of Sonmiyâni. “Sonmiyâni,” says Kempthorne, “is a small town or fishing village situated at the mouth of a creek which runs up some distance inland. It is governed by a Sheikh, and the inhabitants appear to be very poor, chiefly subsisting on dried fish and rice. A very extensive bar or sandbank runs across the mouth of this inlet, and none but vessels of small burden can get over it even at high water, but inside the water is deep.” The inhabitants of the present day are as badly off for water as their predecessors of old. “Everything,” says one who visited the place, “is scarce, even water, which is procured by digging a hole five or six feet deep, and as many in diameter, in a place which was formerly a swamp; and if the water oozes, which sometimes it does not, it serves them that day, and perhaps the next, when it turns quite brackish, owing to the nitrous quality of the earth.”