183
45. Very great tides. — The vivid description of the tidal bore, in this and the following paragraph, is certainly the result of personal experience. To a merchant familiar with the all but tideless waters of the Red Sea, it must indeed have been a wonder of nature. The same thing occurs in many places where a strong tide is forced into a narrow, shallow and curving estuary, as in Burma, the Bay of Fundy, the Bay of Panama, and elsewhere. According to the Imperial Gazetteer of India , IX, 297, high spring tides in the Gulf of Cambay rise and fall as much as 33 feet, and run at a velocity of 6 to 7 knots an hour. Ordinary tides reach 25 feet, at 4/4 to 6 knots. The inevitable damage to shipping, under such difficulties, was the cause of the desertion of the Cambay ports for Surat and, more recently, Bombay.
46. The sea rushing in with a hoarse roar.
“Through hoarse roar never remitting,
Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering.”
Walt Whitman: Patrolling Barnegat.
47. Arattii. — This is a Prakrit form of the Sanscrit Arashtra, who were a people of the Panjab; in fact the name Ardtta is often synonymous with the Panjab in Hindu literature.
47. Arachosii. — This people occupied the country around the modern Kandahar (31° 2.1' N., 65° 43 ; E.). McCrindle ( Ancient India , 88) says “Arachosia extended westward beyond the meridian of Kandahar, and was skirted on the east by the river Indus. On the north it stretched to the western section of the Hindu Kush and on the south to Gedrosia. The province was rich and populous, and the fact that it was traversed by one of the main routes by which Persia communicated with India added greatly to its importance.”
47. GandaraBi. — (Sanscrit, Gandhara f This people dwelt on both sides of the Cabul River, above its junction with the Indus; the modern Peshawar district. In earlier times they extended east of the Indus, where their eastern capital was located — Takshasi/a, a large and prosperous city, called by the Greeks Taxila.
(See also Holdich, Gates of India , 99, 114, 179, 185; Vincent Smith, Early History, 32, 43, 50, 52, 54; Foucher, Notes sur la geo- graphic ancienne du Gandhara . )
The trade-route briefly referred to in the mention of Gandhara and Pushkalavatl was that leading to Bactria, whence it branched west- ward to the Caspian and the Euphrates, and eastward through Turke- stan to China, the “Land of This” of § 64.
47. Poclais. — (Sanscrit, Pushkaravati, or Pushkalavatl, “abound-
