467 



fully for examples of bifurcations in the interior 

 of countries, even among streams much less con- 

 siderable, I have hitherto found only three or 

 four with any certainty. I shall not mention 

 the interbranchings of the great rivers of Indo- 

 China, the natural canals that seem to unite the 

 rivers of Ava and Pegu * 3 and those of Siam and 

 Cambodja ; the mode of these communications 

 not having been sufficiently examined. I shall 



basins, and, like the pools of Longpendu in France (Brisson, 

 in the Journal de VEcole Polyt., vol. 7, p. 280), like lake 

 Lessoe in Norway (Buch, Voyage en Laponie, vol, i, p. 182), 

 like the lakes and marshes of the governments of Olonetz 

 and of Perme in Russia, and those of the steppes (pampos) 

 of Patagonia, pouring their waters into two systems of rivers 

 independant of each other. 



* According to the researches of Mr. Dalrymple, the 

 Anan appears to form, at a hundred leagues from the coast, 

 a canal, resembling that of the Cassiquiare, between the Mei- 

 Kong, or Cambodja, and the Menam, or river of Siam. 

 The communications between the great river Ava or Irawad- 

 dy, and the Sittang or Martaban (River of Pegu ?), appear 

 to me to be owing only to the overflowing of some lakes at 

 a point of partition between the two basins, far from the bed 

 of the two principal recipients. (See the great map of Asia 

 by Mr. Arrowsmith, 1818, and a judicious disquisition on the 

 course of the river of the Birman empire in Malte-Brun, 

 Geogr. } vol. iv, p. 170, 190.) An analogous partition of wa- 

 ters appears to form, near Jaghederpoor, that extraordinary 

 communication between two great rivers of Indostan, the 

 Mahanuddy and the Godavery. Mr. Bowdich has recently 

 announced, in the account of his Journey to the Ashantees 

 (p. 187, 484), a double bifurcation of the Niger, according 



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