]54 



C. W. ODLING, ESQ., M.INST.C.E._, C.S.T., ON 



within my own knowledge in 1868, overflowed its banks, so 

 that a European, who was staying, with his wife and child, in a 

 travellers' rest house some eight miles away, had to take 

 shelter on the roof, wliere I am sorry to say the child died. 



The rivers, in the deltas of Bengal, frequently become 

 iiarrower as they approach the sea, witli the result that in the 

 flood season they overflow their banks for long distances, and 

 for 30 to 50 miles, they form seas of water with villages, dotted 

 here and there, on hillocks, appearing above the water. At 

 that time of year the difficulty, when travelling in a boat, is to 

 be sure you are in the river and not sailing over what ought tu 

 be dry land, with the chances, should tlie flood subside, of 

 finding your boat stranded two or three miles away from the river 

 bank. Such rivers are frequently embanked, but tlie general 

 result of such embankments is only to intensify the flood lower 

 down the river, the flooded country on each side, when open, 

 performing the office of a reservoir and impounding the water, 

 until the flood commences to subside, when it gradually passes 

 away. Here in England the banks of rivers are usually the 

 lowest parts of the country and are apt to be flooded in wet 

 years, like the last ; in deltas, the reverse is the case, the banks 

 of the rivers are frequently the highest parts of the countiy, 

 as the silt has accunnilated there more than elsewhere. In 

 flood time the water in the rivers is heavilv charged with silt, 

 and when it overtops the banks, its flow being diminished in 

 speed, the greater part of the silt, which is only held in 

 suspension, when the velocity of the water is considerable, is 

 forthwith deposited. Some portion of the finer particles of the 

 silt of course remain, and are gradually deposited on the fields, 

 which, in the course of lonu' years, are raised also. Deltas are, 

 in fact, the product of river silt. Even outside the deltas 

 proper the Indian rivers have, what in England would be looked 

 on as eccentricities, the Kiver Sone, for instance, being 2^ miles 

 wide at Dehri, the site of the weir, from wliich the Sone Canals 

 take off, whilst 60 miles lower down, where the East India 

 liailway crosses it, that river is 6,000 feet wide only. The 

 deficiency in width is partly made up by greater depth. 



Tlie rivers of India, from an irrigation point of view, may be 

 divided into two classes, those whose source lies in the snow- 

 capped mountains of the Himalayas and those which rise in 

 the hills situated in the interior of India. The said hills, it may 

 be mentioned, are anything between 4,000 and 8,000 feet in 

 height, whilst many of the peaks of the Himalayas are more 

 than 20,000 feet in height. In the case of rivers whose source is 



