'MO PBQCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. | Apr. 1 , 



Not very long ago, if we may trust tradition, the Damooda joined 

 the Hooglj r at Satgong, above Hoogly ; and even in RennelTs time 

 the old bed was open, and is marked in his maps ; but it was bent 

 back, and was evidently, in his time, losing its gripe on that stream. 

 It has now, like the Sylhet rivers, been bent south, and, like the 

 Megna, lies in wait further down, prepared, in conjunction with the 

 Roopnarain, to retaliate if any accident or moment of weakness 

 should come over its old antagonist, the Hoogly. 



According to the natives, this great change took place only in 

 1757-1 762 *, when the Damooda burst into what had been the old 

 channel of the Bhagaruttee and joined the Hoogly — the new name 

 of the new stream — close to the mouth of the Eoopnarain, which the 

 natives persist in asserting is an old mouth of the Ganges ; and they 

 are probably right, though Major Rennell, in his Atlas, takes the 

 trouble of denying it. 



If the time when this great change is said to have taken place be 

 even approximatively true, it affords a much more satisfactory ex- 

 planation of any change that may have taken place in the navi- 

 gability of the Hoogly than can be derived from any silting-up of 

 the Kishnaghur rivers, which seem to have remained unaltered at 

 least since Tavernier travelled in India in 1666, when these rivers 

 seem to have been pretty much in the state they now are. But if 

 the land is rising rapidly in the eastern half, especially about Jaf- 

 fiergunge, which there seems no reason to doubt, while there has 

 been no change of level in recent times in the western half, it follows, 

 almost as a certainty, that the western rivers must go on gradually 

 but steadily increasing in volume, and with them the quantity of 

 water flowing through the Hoogly. 



On the whole, therefore, it seems fortunate for Calcutta that the 

 Hoogly did not break through at Sooksaghur; and this circum- 

 stance will be a benefit to a large portion of the delta if it forces 

 either the Echamuttee or the Boyrub again to open its oscillations. As 

 mentioned above, both these rivers were cut off by the Jellinghy and 

 Matabangah when this part of the delta had been so raised that the 

 inclination was rather to the west than the east or south. When 

 the town of Jessore was built on the Boyrub, some 350 years ago, it 

 is said that it was situated on the sea-shore, though this probably 

 only means that the country to the southward of it was a tidal 

 swamp, which, so far as we can judge, was the condition of a great 

 portion of the delta at that period, though the seaward face of the 

 Sunderbuns was probably the same as it now is. 



It must have been immediately after this that the Kishnaghur 

 rivers cut across the Boyrub, and deprived it of its supply of Ganges 

 water ; for at a distance of about six miles below the town of Jessore 

 it ceases to be a " depositing " river. Up to that point its banks 

 are high and firm, its oscillations quick, and it has all the appear- 

 ance of an active river. For twenty-five miles from that point it 

 runs to Culna, and beyond it, as straight as a canal, through an 

 immense tract of jheel-land. It has had no silt to form banks, or 



* Capt. Sherwell's Report on the Rivers of the Ganges, 1858. 



