GHORBASTA. The climate of Makran generally, but especially at the level tract south of the mountains, is very unhealthy. The Ghorbasta or Ghorband in Makran are great structures, at times almost bearing resemblance to the Cyclopean remains of Europe. They are evidently remains of a people that occupied or passed through the country long prior to the advent of the present occupants, who know nothing of-the builders, or of the uses of the buildings, and attribute them to kafirs or infidels. They are found usually in out of-the-way places, narrow valleys at present stony and barren. They are placed always on declivities, or across the mouths of ravines. Their solidity and size are proportion6d to-t•he steepness of the declivity. Where there is only a gentle .slope, tbe walls are narrow, low, and slightly built ; but where the descent is great, and the flow of water after floods and rains would be violent, they aro of great thickness and height, and, as seen in the valley beyond liagliwana, supported and strength ened by buttressea or walls built at right angles. They always present a scarped face to the opposite side, which, when well preserved, is levelled off with the surrounding and higher ground. Those built across the mouths of ravines are very solid and high, and usually the builders have taken advantage of some mass of reek jutting out, as a sort of foundation. Those in slopes are never seen singly, but always in numbers varying with the extent of the ground to be covered, and placed in succession one behind the other. The intervening ground being levelled, is thus formed into a succession of terraces. They were con itructed for the irrigation of the country. Those built across ravines were intended to form tanks ;or the preservation of the waters that coine down it irregular intervals in floods. Those on slopes, :o economize the distribution of water ; the mrplus water of one terrace running over and boding the lower one, depositing as it went a [ayer of surface soil. The ground thus levelled of ;ourse became more valuable, freed from the rregularity and roughness which characterize lien narrow stony valleys. They are almost :onfined to the provinces of Jhalawan, and are argest and most important in the southern and iouth - eastern portions of the province. The indent city at Gunjjuk seems of the same date, ind constructed by the same people. From the lumbers and position of these structures, the >eople who built them must have been extremely iumerous,—must have felt that the country as :xisting by nature was utterly ine,apable of iupporting them ; and they must have possessed in energy and ingenuity which the present races ire totally without. It appears probable—nay,
ilmost certain—that they must have swarmed east ward over the mountains from 3fakran, making .heir appearance on the south-west portion of the ;able -land. Gradually pushing eastward and iorthward, as their numbers increased, either •apidly by additions from without, or more slowly )3, increase of the population from within, they iscended to the various valleys as high as Kalat, when, discovering the great eastern outlet, the Joolla pass, they found an exit by it into the bins of India. How long they remained on the ble - land, from whence they originally came, Ind over what countries they eventually distri outed, are alike mysteries.
There are one or two points of slight resemblance ' etween the Pel&sgi, the builders of the Cyclopean walls of Greece, Italy, etc., and the gliorbasta auilders, suggesting that they might have been a tindred people with kindred habits. The Pelasgi ;ame from Asia, not from Asia 31inor, not from Hyria, not from Assyria, not from Persia, but pro xibly from that birthplace of emigration, the tract iorth and north-east of Persia. The ghorbasta milders probably mine from the satne tract, and were iot Makranis, nor Persians, nor Assyrians. The elasgi existed only a few generations in Greece :about 250 years), before they were turned out by ,he Hellenes ; they must therefore have brought with them when they entered the country their wopensity for building massive walls, and coin nenced their work almost immediately on arrival.
It was probably the same with the wall-builders of Baluchistan ; they only reinained in the country long enough to allow them to extend northward as far as Kalat, when, meeting with the 3foolla pass, they debouched into the plairui. Their art was a fully-developed one before they arrived here to carry it out. The Pelasgi arrived in Greece about 1800 n.c. This date seems to accord roughly with the advent of the unknown people into J halawan.
The gliorbasta buildings differ considerably, however ; for, when compared with the Cyclopean remains, they aro slight, most roughly executed, and insignificant ; yet they evince a like instinct and habit in two races which probably came originally frofl3 the same region. Lieutenant Aytoun, in his Geological Report on a portion of the Belgaum Collectorate, given in Mr. Carter'a Geological Papers on Western India (p. 392), mentions that certain gorges in the hills had been artificially bunded, and the Ka.dar are a termce cultivating race on the Pulney Hills in the extreme south of the Peninsula.—Dr. Cook, in No. vi. Bombay Medical Transactions.