1885.] ` Geography ana Travets, 785 
sources, the Irawadi is no other than the lower course of the 
Tibetan Sanpo.” Not only do the old Chinese geographers 
connect the Sanpo with the Irawadi,.but the Chinese official map, 
made after the surveys of the French missionaries in the last 
century, does the same. The imperial geography of the Thung 
dynasty (617-907 A.D.) says that the great Kin-sha-Kiang is 
made up of two rivers and then passes by Mano and Tchenago 
(Bhamo and Tshempenago). It adds: “There is no doubt that 
this river is the Yaroo Sanpo' of Thibet.” The Emperor Kang-hi 
says that the Yaroo Sanpo enters the kingdom of Burma. The 
Yunnanese call the Upper Irawadi the Ta-Kin-sha-kiang, or Great 
Kin-sha river, while the Yang-tse-kiang is the Sui Kin-sha-kiang, 
or Little Kin-sha river, Ta-Kiu-kiang, the official Chinese name 
for the connecting link between the Sanpo and the Irawadi is 
identical with Nam-Kiu-long, the name given by the Shans who 
live upon it, both meaning the Great Kiu river. The explora- 
tions of Hindoo surveyors have carried the Sanpo to the east of 
the point where it was formerly supposed to enter Assam, but the 
lower courses of the affluents of the Brahmaputra were immedi- 
ately twisted upon the maps so as to still show the union of the 
Sanpo with the Brahmaputra. 
(4) It is impossible, on the supposition that the Zayul-Chu is 
the upper course of the Eastern Brahmaputra and the Sanpo that 
of the main branch of that river, to account for the volume of 
water in the Irawadi at Bhamo. A drainage area of from 5000 
to 8000 square miles, which is all that could in sucha case be 
left to the Irawadi, could not possibly yield so great a volume. 
(5) The Zayul-Chu, which is said to be the Eastern Brahma- 
putra, may prove to be an affluent of the Irawadi. Mr. Gordon 
goes into elaborate arguments to show that Rima and Sama, places 
upon this river, are some. thirty miles farther to the north-east 
than they are placed by Captain Wilcox (who did not visit them). 
In this half degree there is room for the Sanpo to flow to the 
Irawadi. The volume of the Zayul-Chu is greater than that of 
the Upper Brahmaputra. 
(6) The Brahmaputra influents, even if the Sanpo is barred 
out by the range of mountains upon its southern and eastern 
borders, have basins sufficiently large to account for their dimen- 
sions. The Subansiri has 7000 square miles and a discharge of 
240,000 cubic feet per second; the Eastern Brahmaputra 7000 
Square miles with 326,000 cubic feet, and the Dihong, which 
some believe to be the Sanpo, would without it have 7500 to 
12,000 square miles, which, in the rainy climate of the southern 
slopes of the Himalayas, would account for its volume of 423,- 
000 cubic feet per second. 
In reply General J. T. Walker attacked particularly the argu- 
ments connected with the Zayul-Chu, certainly the weakest part 
of Mr. Gordon’s paper. 
