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Vvul RIVERS AND LAKES 303 
have deserted Calcutta. At this juncture the 
Eastern Bengal Railway Company intervened. 
They were carrying their works along the 
ridge, and they have, for the moment at least, 
stopped the oscillation in this direction.” 
This has affected many of the other tribu- 
taries of the Ganges, so that the survey made 
by Rennell in 1780-90 is no longer any evi- 
dence as to the present course of the rivers. 
They may now be anywhere else; in some 
cases all we can say is that they are certainly 
not now where they were then. 
The association of the three great Huropean 
rivers, the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Danube, 
with the past history of our race, invests them 
with a singular fascination, and their past his- 
tory is one of much interest. They all three 
rise in the group of mountains between the 
Galenstock and the Bernardino, within a space 
of a few miles; on the east the waters run into 
the Black Sea, on the north into the German 
Ocean, and on the west into the Mediterranean. 
But it has not always been so. Their head- 
waters have been at one time interwoven 
together. 
