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THE

MONTHLY REVIEW.

JANUARY, 1839.

ART. I.

1.-Cutch; or, Random Sketches, taken during a Residence in one of the Northern Provinces of Western India: interspersed with Legends and Traditions. By MRS. POSTANS. 8vo. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1839.

2.-The Present and Future Prospects of our Indian Empire. By CAPT. G. E. WESTMACOTT, 37th Bengal Inf., &c. London: Hooper. 1838.

3.-Steam to India, vid the Red Sea, and via the Cape of Good Hope. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1838.

Ar the present moment when the public mind is so extraordinarily excited about the affairs and prospects of our Eastern Empire, any book which describes or speculates about the country is sure to be welcomed, even although its views may have been hastily formed, and its general qualities be of an inferior order. The works at the head of our paper, however, would at any time be acceptable; for each of the writers, it is manifest, possesses the abilities and the literary accomplishments that would produce and set off a work on any theme which they might happen to study and to adopt. Under these circumstances, both general and special, we shall be held excused when we allow them a considerable space in our pages.

Mrs. Postans' work immediately treats of the very region which at this moment is perhaps the seat of war, and in which British interests are vitally concerned. Cutch forms the last province of India on the frontier towards Persia, and one of the outposts of our Indian empire. It lies between the sixty-eighth and seventy-second degrees of east longitude, and the twenty-second and twenth-fourth degrees of north latitude. Its greatest length is about one hundred and sixty-five miles; its breadth, where widest, is fifty-two miles, but narrows at a certain quarter to fifteen. Its boundaries on the west is the most easterly mouth of the Indus; the desert of salt and water, called the Runn, stretches along its northern and northeastern limits; while the Gulph of Cutch and the Indian Ocean bounds its sides. The coast is much indented, affording many bays suitable for anchoring. It contains coal-beds that promise to afford a large supply of the most valuable of all minerals; and its plains VOL. 1. (1839.) No. 1.

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