464 



APPENDIX. 



I shall show, on the other hand, that analogy furnishes us with the conclusion that with- 

 in the limits prescibed by my researches to the sources of the Irawadi, there is sufficient 

 space for the formation of a river of great magnitude, and the question will then appear to 

 hinge upon this point. What is the magnitude of this river compared with others.* 



We have certainly been told that, in the rainy season, it would be impossible to make 

 way against its impetuous current, were it not for the strong southerly breezes which then 

 prevail ; but to those who are acquainted with the Ganges and Bralimaputra,-\ this is saying 

 no more than that it resembles those rivers in the periodical difficulties of its navigation: 

 and when we further recollect that the Irawadi is, in one place, contracted in breadth by 

 its high banks to four hundred yards J (of which we have no similar instance in the others §) 

 we cannot consent to allow that the difficulty of stemming its current is a convincing 

 argument of its superior importance. 

 ■ 



" During the dry months of January, February, March, and April, the waters of the 

 Irawadi subside into a stream that is barely navigable : frequent shoals and banks of 

 sand retard boats of burthen. "|| " I see here," says Dr. Buchanan in his Journal, 

 " some boats poled along in the very middle of the river, where there does not appear to 

 be more than six or eight feet water : It is deeper, however, towards the steep bank." 

 Dr. Hamilton^ says of it generally, that it is equal to the Ganges or Brahmaputra, 

 and I am not aware that any .one has rated it higher, but Officers, whom I have questioned 

 on the subject, who had sufficient opportunity of forming a judgment during their long 

 sojourn on its banks, in the course of the late war, compare the Irawadi, above its junction 





* It is to be regretted that those who had the opportunity did not give us a section of the Irawadi, and the 

 velocity of its current. 



t The latter particularly. 



$ Two years in Avg. 



§ Immediately below Gohati, hills confine the Brahmaputra to the breadth of one thousand two hundred 

 yards, the narrowest in its course through Asam ; there, in the rainy season, boats are necessitated to be moored 

 till a westerly breeze springs up of force sufficient to carry them through the narrow strait : but there is often great 

 difficulty even where the river flows in an open bed. When coming down the liver in the latter end of October 

 1825, I saw a fleet of Commissariat boats (at that time very much required with their supplies for the army) which 

 had been twenty-five days between Goalpara and Naghurbera hill, a distance of thirty miles, and there was no 

 remarkable wind to impede their progress. 



|j Symes' Embassy, p. 24, ed. of 1800. 



IT Vol. 3, Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, p. 37. 



