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“We have indicum, a substance imported from India, with the composition of which I am unacquainted. When broken small it is of a black appearance, but when diluted it exhibits a wondrous com- bination of purple and deep azure. There is another kind of it which floats in the caldrons in the purple dye-houses, and is the scum of the purple dye. ... If used as a medicine, indicum acts as a sedative for ague and other shivering fits and desiccates sores.”
Marco Polo says (III, xxii) “it is made of a certain herb which is gathered, and (after the roots have been removed) is put into great vessels upon which they pour water and lave it until the whole of the plant is decomposed. They then put this liquid in the sun, which is tremendously hot there, so that it boils and coagulates, and becomes such as we see it. They then divide it into pieces of four ounces each, and in that form it is exported to our ports. ”
40. The Gulf of Eirinon is the strange expanse now known as the Rinn or Rann (Wilderness) of Cutch, the name coming from the crescent-shaped rocky island bordering it on the south. It is a uniform saline plain about 140 miles long, and reaching 60 miles from shore to shore; and in the dry season (of the N. E. monsoon) it is dry and firm, 10 to 20 inches above sea-level. It opens seaward by a narrow channel, and west of Cutch the northern Rann communi- cates through a second channel with the Rann, which is connected with the low-lying coast of the Gulf of Cutch. In the rainy season (of the S. W. monsoon) the sea is driven through these channels by the wind, and the rain descending from the hills also flows into it, forming a sheet of stagnant water about 3 feet deep. But the ground is so level that the Rann is never deep enough to stop the camel cara- vans, which cross it at all seasons, traveling by night, to avoid the terrible heat and refraction, and the illusions of the mirages which constantly hover over the Rann. The guidance of stars and compass is preferred.
This saline plain was certainly at one time flooded by the sea, as shown by the abundance of salt and by the remains of vessels dug up near the neighboring villages. Old harbor works are observed near Nagar Parkar, on the eastern side of the Rann. Within his- torical times it was probably the scene of an active sea-trade; even in modern times the port of Mandavi, on the southern coast of Cutch, carries on a direct trade with Zanzibar, in small vessels averaging 50 tons, of less than 10 feet draught.
We are here again reminded of the ancient Turanian (Accadian- Dravidian) sea trade, which must have centered in these bays.
The whole area was probably raised by some great earthquake.
