WATER-SUPPLY. 57 



tributaries only flood streams during the rains. Although quite a 

 large stream the Pin Chaung for several miles of its course 

 across the plain in the centre of Myingyan district has an under- 

 ground course during the dry season, which is so deep that the 

 Burmans who live near have not been able to reach it by means of 

 wells, neither do they get any water under the sand in the stream bed 

 above, and in consequence during the long drought in the last dry 

 season the villagers living near the Pin Chaung in this part of its 

 course suffered so severely from the water famine that they had to 

 leave their own villages and crowd into those on the banks of the 

 Irrawaddi. 



In many of the nullahs and sometimes apparently the driest of 

 them, water could be obtained at a few feet 



Water often obtain- 



able by digging into dry from the surface by digging a hole in the sand 



beds of small streams. _ . 



and this was in places the only water obtain- 

 able. This storage of water under the sand was particularly 

 common where the water-courses run over miocene beds, which are 

 largely composed of soft shales, but it is by no means confined to 

 the miocene areas and was not unfrequently found where the under- 

 lying rocks are alluvium or even ordinary pliocene sandstones. 



Where the streams flow over the hilly country, the nullahs are 

 mostly cut down pretty deep and they often have lofty precipitous 

 sides, but where aided by numerous tributary streams the torrents 

 which flow during the rainy season have in places worn out quite 

 large and broad valleys in which they have also deposited beds of 

 alluvium over considerable areas. 



Coming now to the geology of the area we find that the rocks 

 Geology of the area- are a ^ °f tertiary or recent age, none older 



rocks tertiary and recent. u~* ^ 



3 fc being represented. 



As before mentioned the recent (post-pliocene) deposits con- 

 Recent deposits occupy sistin g chiefly of sand and gravel cover the 

 hms. gr ° und betWee " the flat or sll '§ htl y rolling country between the hills, 

 and the areas they occupy are often very large, 

 the chief being that of the plain stretching eastward from the foot 



( 57 ) 



