CAMBAY, a town of Hindustan, in the province of Gujerat, and the port of Ahmedabad, situated at the upper part of the Gulf of Cambay, and supposed to be the Camanes of Ptolemy. It was formerly a very flourishing city, the seat of an extensive commerce. But it decayed with Ahmedabad in Gujerat, in the supplying of which its chief commerce consisted, and it is now much reduced. Other causes also are assigned for its decay, namely, the danger of navigating the Gulf of Cambay, owing to the great rapidity of the tides, which rise here to the height of forty feet, so that at high water ships can anchor near the town; but at low water the river runs almost dry, so that the vessels in the river lie aground in the mud; and in some places the current is so rapid that a ship which takes the ground is immediately upset, and all on board generally perish. The trade has in consequence decreased, and is now chiefly confined to elephants’ teeth and cornelians, which are here procured for the China market, and to cotton, which is the chief article of export, and grain. The houses are built of stone or brick; and the town is surrounded by a brick wall nearly five miles in circumference, inclosing four large reservoirs of good water, and three bazars. Many of these houses have underground apartments, where the people were in the habit of concealing their females and their valuable property in times of alarm. To the south-east of the town there are very extensive ruins of subterranean temples and other buildings, half buried in the sand with which the ancient town was overwhelmed. These temples belong to the Jains, and contain two massive statues of their deities, the one black and the other white. The principal one, as the inscription intimates, is Pariswanath or Parswanatha, carved and consecrated in the reign of the emperor Acbar in 1502; the black one has the date of 1651 inscribed. Cambay is supposed about the fifth century to have been the capital of the Hindoo emperors of the west; and in 1515 a Portuguese writer, Osorio, says, that when Francis d’Almeida landed near Cambay, he saw the ruins of sumptuous buildings and temples, the ruins of an ancient city. In 1780 it was taken possession of by the army of General Goddard, and restored to the Mahrattas in 1783. It was again taken [7:6:31] possession of by the British, and confirmed to them at the peace of 1803. The travelling distance from Bombay is 281, from Delhi 663, and from Calcutta 1253 miles. Long. 72. 45. E. Lat. 22. 23. N.

The Gulf of Cambay penetrates the north-west coast of India, in the province of Gujerat, about 150 miles. It is supposed that the depth of water in this gulf has been decreasing for more than two centuries past. The tides run into it with amazing velocity; and at low water, during spring tides, the bottom is left dry from latitude 22. 3. north to the town of Cambay. Fifteen miles east of Cambay the bed of-the gulf is not above six miles broad, and at low water it is left entirely dry. But the passage is extremely dangerous, and cannot be attempted without a native guide, the whole surface being covered with deep mud and quicksands, in which the traveller, losing his way, may be overwhelmed by the flood-tide, which rushes furiously into the gulf, and with such rapidity, as scarcely at times to admit of escape either by man or horse.