1849.] On the Physical Geography of the Himalaya. 785 



to the westward and to the eastward ; and that the general causes of 

 the differences have been pretty plainly indicated above, where the 

 necessary effects of the sandstone range and of the eastern dip of the 

 plains upon those oceanic forces to which all the phoenomena of the 

 region owe their origin, have been suggested. 



Throughout Assam, from Gwalpara to Saddia, Major Jenkins assures 

 me there is neither Bhaver nor Tarai ; and if we look to the narrow- 

 ness of that valley between the Himalaya and the mighty and impe- 

 tuous Brahmaputra, and consider moreover the turmoil and violence 

 of the oceanic current from the N. W., when its progress was staid by 

 the locked-up valley of Assam, we shall be at no loss to conceive how 

 all distinctive marks of Bhaver and Tarai should here cease to be 

 traceable. 



It will be observed that in the foregone descriptions of our Hima- 

 layan rivers I have not adverted (save casually in one instance, in order 

 to correct an error as to the true name of the Kali) to their partial 

 trans-Himalayan sources. And I confess it seems to me that perspicuity 

 is by no means served by undue insistency on that feature of our rivers. 

 Capt. Herbert was thus led to travel beyond his proper limits with a 

 result by no means favourable ; for, it appears to me that he has con- 

 founded rather than cleared our conceptions of Asie Centrale as the 

 Bam-i-dunya (dome of the world) by attempting to detach therefrom 

 that most characteristic part of it, the plateau of Tibet, because certain 

 Indian rivers have (in part) Tibetan sources ! My theory of water- 

 sheds does not incline me thus to violate the grander arrangements of 

 nature, and the less so, inasmuch as the rivers I have to speak of 

 would not afford so plausible an excuse for such violation, as if I had 

 to treat of the Indus, Sutledge* and Brahmaputra alias Sanpu.f The 

 Arun and the Karnali, though they draw much water from Tibet, draw 

 far more from the pente meridionale of the Himalaya, or the ghat line 



* llecte Satluj vel Satrudra. 



f Mr. Gutzlaff, in a paper recently read before the Geographical Society of Lon- 

 don, has reverted to Klaproth's notion that the Sanpu is not the Brahmaputra. But 

 Mr. Gutzlaff has overlooked J. Prinsep's important, and I think decisive argument 

 on the other side, viz., that the Brahmaputra discharges three times more water 

 than the Ganges, which it could not do if it arose on the N. E. confines of Assam, 

 notwithstanding the large quantity of water contributed by the Monas. 



5 i 



