378 Memorandum on the countries between [No. 4, 
the continuation of a great Thibetan river, though such evidence as 
could be got was against the supposition. We shall see if M. De- 
Mazure throws any light on this presently. 
The Tsanpo in Thibet has been reached by only one traveller in 
modern times, at least only one who has narrated his journey, viz. 
Turner, on his Embassy in the days of Warren Hastings. Turner was 
told by the Thibetans that the river entered Assam. So says Father 
Giorgi who wrote on the authority of the Catholic missionaries 
in Thibet in the last century.* The measured discharge of the 
Dihong in the month of January is 5G000 feet per second, pro- 
bably more than twice the low water discharge of the Ganges at 
Benares, and considerably more than the low water discharge of the 
Indus at Attok, (a river which so singularly resembles it in its course, 
on the assumption that the Tsanpo and Diliong are the same)f. This 
alone is almost enough to decide the question. For if the Dihong 
is not itself the Tsanpo, the Tsanpo must limit the basin that feeds 
the Dihong in a manner quite irreconeileable with the enormous dis- 
charge of the latter. 
With a philologist who has a theory to maintain, it is said that 
vowels go for nothing and consonants for very little. With a geo- 
grapher who has a theory to maintain, we may say that latitude goes 
for very little and longitudes for nothing. 
Klaproth, not aware indeed of the discharge attributed to the 
Dihong, at least when his theory was started, tried to provide for the 
difficulty we have just alluded to by carrying the southern turn of the 
Thibetan Tsanpo a degree and a half to the eastward of its position in 
D’Anville’s maps and by carrying the Dihong’s mouth forty miles to 
the westward of its known position, besides twisting its direction in a 
way for which there is no foundation in fact. 
* “ Seseque tandem in (G-angem exonerat.” Alphabetum Tibetanum, p. 343, 
Major Dalton, long resident in upper Assam, stated at the Society that the general 
belief of the people near the Dihong was, that it came from Thibet. The Diliong 
and the (eastern) Brahmaputra are the only rivers of Assam which they admit to 
come from Thibet. Major Dalton believes both the Dibong and the Subanshiri, 
great as their volume is, to be derived entirely from the Himalya and not from 
Thibetan sources. 
t Wilcox mentions the traditions of a great and destructive flood on the 
Dihong in the last century, analogous to the Indus “ cataclysms” of 184*1 and 
1858. Major Dalton at the Society’s meeting mentioned a more curious Assamese 
tradition, viz. that some centuries ago there was no Dihong, but that it appeared 
by sudden irruption into the valley. 
