286

INDIA

Karachi was not so very long ago a collection of buildings
grouped in a waste of sand, with a few gravel hills standing
seawards, against the base of which washed the everrestless
 waves of the Indian Ocean. But the introduction
of water from the Malir River has changed all that. [tis
now quite sufficiently supplied with trees and vegetation.
The neat stone houses stand in pretty compounds, in
which flowers and rare shrubs are not wanting, and there

Fig. 86.—Karachi Harbour.

are here and there expanses of green lawn that would be
a credit to England. An overgrown native city, a long
straggling cantonment, and the harbour which has made
of Karachi a great commercial port, are the chief features
of the place. Much land reclamation has been accomplished,
 and more is in progress. The value of land has
risen enormously in the course of the last fifty years ; and
it is hardly necessary to add that most of the land is in
the hands of the Parsis. Many of the leading merchant
houses in Europe have their representatives in Karachi ;