It would be most interesting to decide the position of Rambakia. What we want to find is an ancient site, somewhere approaching the sea-coast, say 30 or 40 miles from the crossing of the Purali, in a district that might once have been cultivated and populous. We have found two such sites--one now called Khair Kot, to the north-west of Liari, commanding the Hala Pass; and another called Kotawari, south-west of Liari, and very near the sea. The latter has but recently been uncovered from the sand, but an existing mud wall and its position on the coast indicate that it is not old enough for our purpose. The other, Khair Kot, is an undoubted relic of mediæval Arab supremacy. It is the Kambali of Idrisi on the high-road from Armail (now Bela) to the great Sind port of Debal, and the record of it belongs to another history. Nevertheless, Khair Kot is exactly where we should expect Rambakia to be, and quite possibly where Rambakia was. Amongst the coins and relics collected there, there is, however, no trace of Greek inscription; but that this corner of the Bela district was once flourishing and populous there is ample evidence.
From Rambakia Alexander proceeded with half his targeteers and part of his cavalry to force the pass which the Gadrosii and Oritæ had conjointly seized "with the design of stopping his progress." This pass might either have been the turning pass at the northern end of the Hala, or it might have been on the water-parting from which the Phur River springs farther on. I should think it was probably the former, where there is better room for cavalry to act.
Immediately after defeating the Oritæ (who apparently made little resistance) Alexander appointed Leonatus, with a picked force, to support the new Governor of Rambakia (Hephæstion having rejoined the army), and left him to make arrangements for victualling the fleet when it arrived, whilst he pushed on through desert country into the territory of the Gadrosii by "a road very dangerous," and drawing down towards the coast. He must then have followed the valley of the Phur to the coast, and pushed on along the track of the modern telegraph line till he reached the neighbourhood of the Hingol River. We are indebted to Aristobulus for an account of this track in Alexander's time. It was here that the Ph[oe]nician followers of the army gathered their myrrh from the tamarisk trees; here were the mangrove swamps, and the euphorbias, which still dot the plains with their impenetrable clumps of prickly "shoots or stems, so thick set that if a horseman should happen to be entangled therewith he would sooner be pulled off his horse than freed from the stem," as Aristobulus tells us. Here, too, were found the roots of spikenard, so precious to the greedy Ph[oe]nician followers. These same products formed part of the coast trade in the days when the Periplus was written, 400 years later, though there is little demand for them now.