228 
JOURNAL OF AN EMBASSY 
source, if I am rightly informed, cannot be traced 
to any one principal fountain, but to numerous 
petty streams coming from the mountains of Lao, 
and of the Chinese province of Yunan. I have 
described it in the Journal as being swollen by a 
few days’ heavy rain; a proof, that above Ava it 
is a stream of no great magnitude, and that its 
source cannot be very remote. It may farther be 
added, that had it been navigable from China, the 
Chinese trade to Ava would naturally have been 
conveyed by it; whereas it is altogether conveyed 
by land, even from E’hamo to the Burrnan capi¬ 
tal.* From the town of Ava to its dehouchement , 
the Irawadi receives no tributary stream of the 
least importance, except the Kyen-dwen, and does 
not throw off a single branch. Its dehouchement 
commences shortly after it quits the hilly land of 
Ava and enters Pegu. It then throws off a great 
many branches of various magnitude, watering 
an immense extent of country, and affording 
a convenience of internal navigation, to which 
* In May and June 1827, Lieutenants Wilcox and Burlton 
crossed the Langtan mountains from Seddiya, and visited the 
Irawadi, in latitude about 27° 30': this spot was represented to 
them by the natives as being about fifty miles to the south of 
its source, which consisted of numerous small streams, issuing 
out of lofty mountains covered with perpetual snow. At the spot 
they visited it, thfr river was but eighty yards broad. The con¬ 
jectures thrown out in the text, respecting the origin of the 
Irawadi, were written before I became possessed of the informa¬ 
tion in this note. 
