494 DESTRUCTIVE CURRENTS. 



province by a vast body of water, difficult and often 

 dangerous to navigate in small craft. * 



Also, at the confluence of the Brahmaputra wiih 

 the Ganges, near Goalundo, a point quite 140 miles 

 from the sea, the destructive energy of the stream has 

 been particularly manifested. During the rainy season 

 the river here forms a very large body of water 

 several miles across, and the influence of the tides 

 ascends for many miles beyond this station, which is 

 noted for the uncontrollable violence of its currents. 

 Everything that engineering skill could do to control 

 them has proved ineffectual; the river banks still keep 

 constantly changing, and everything that has been 

 built there has been destroyed. Goalundo Ghat, the 

 terminus of the East Bengal Railway, has in consequence 

 now no permanent buildings. Up to 1875, the 

 Goalundo station stood upon a massive embankment, 

 protected by masonry spurs running out into the river. 

 About ^130,000 had been spent upon these works, but 

 in August of that year the whole was swept away 

 by the flood, and deep water now covers their site. 

 A new terminus has since had to be constructed two 

 miles from the former river bank, f These facts will 

 give the reader some idea of the irresistible power of 

 the Gangetic floods and tide rips, before which the 

 puny efforts of man are effaced as a child rubs out 

 a mark made* upon a slate. 



The tremendous violence and rapidity of the stream 

 is however not a little remarkable, when we consider 

 the almost dead flat nature of the country. For instance, 



* Murray's Handbook for India and Ceylon, 1892, p. 267. 

 j Imperial Gazetteer of India, by Sir W. W. Hunter, Vol. v., 

 p. no. 



