The Tsan pu or Brahmaputra. tributaries, varies from 40,857 to 446,086 cubic feet per second, according to the season of the year. The enormous mass of water spreads itself over a channel of a quarter of a mile to nearly a mile in breadth. The effect produced by the evaporation from this fluvial expanse is so marked that the thermometer is reported to be 10° F. lower close to its surface than on the surrounding plains. The Indus supplies a precious store of water for irrigation works at various points along its course, and forms the great highway of the Southern Punjab and Sind. In its lower course it sends forth distributaries across a wide delta, with Haidarábád (Hyderábád) in Sind as its ancient political capital, and Karáchi (Kurrachee) as its modern port. The silt which it carries down has helped to form the islands, mud banks, and shallows, that have cut off the once famous emporia around the Gulf of Cambay from modern maritime commerce. The BRAHMAPUTRA, like the Sutlej, rises near to the sacred lake of Mánasarowar. Indeed, the Indus, the Sutlej, and the Brahmaputra may be said to start from the same water-parting. The Indus rises on the western slope of the Kailas Mountain, the Sutlej on its southern, and the Brahmaputra at some disThe Kailás tance from its eastern base. The Mariam-la and other saddles watershed. connect the northern mountains, to which the Kailás belongs, The Brahmaputra con fluents in Assam. with the double Himálayan wall. They form an irregular watershed across the trough on the north of the double wall of the Himalayas. The Indus flows down a north-western valley from this transverse watershed; the Sutlej finds a more direct route to India by a south-western valley. The Brahmaputra, under its Tibetan name of Tsan-pu or Sangpu, has its source in 31° N. lat. and 83° E. long. It flows eastwards down the Tsan-pu valley, passing not far to the south of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and about 800 miles of its course are spent in the hollow trough on the north of the Himalayas. After receiving several tributaries from the confines of the Chinese Empire, the river twists round a lofty eastern range of the Himálayas, and enters British territory under the name of the DIHANG, near Sadiyá in Assam. It presently receives two confluents, the DIBANG river from the north, and the Brahmaputra proper from the north-east (lat. 27° 20' N., long. 95° 50' E). The united triple stream then takes its well-known appellation of the Brahmaputra, literally the Son of Brahma or God.' It represents a drainage basin of 361,200 square miles, and its summer discharge at Goálpára in Assam has been computed at 146,188 cubic feet of water per second. During the rains the channel rises 30 or 40 feet above its ordinary level, and its flood discharge is estimated at over 500,000 cubic feet per second. The Brahmaputra rolls down the Assam valley as a vast sheet of water, broken by numerous islands, and exhibiting the operations of alluvion and diluvion on a gigantic scale. It is so heavily freighted with silt from the Himalayas, that the least impediment placed in its current causes a Brahmadeposit, and may give rise to a wide-spreading, almond-shaped putra silt. mud bank. Steamers anchoring near the margin for the night sometimes find their sterns aground next morning on an accumulation of silt, caused by their own obstruction to the current. By centuries of alluvial deposit, the Brahmaputra has raised its banks and channel at parts of the Assam valley to a higher level than the surrounding country. Beneath either bank lies a low strip of marshy land, which is flooded in the rainy season. Beyond these swamps, the ground begins to rise towards the hills that hem in the valley of Assam on both sides. After a course of 450 miles south-west down the Assam The valley, the Brahmaputra sweeps round the spurs of the Gáro Hills due south towards the sea. It here takes the name of Bengal the Jamuna, and for 180 miles rushes across the level plains of (Jamuná Eastern Bengal, till its junction with the Ganges at Goálanda Meghna). (lat. 23° 50′ N., long. 89° 46′ E.). From this point the deltas of the two great river-systems of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra unite into one. But before reaching the sea, their combined volume has yet to receive by way of the CACHAR valley, the drainage of the eastern watershed between Bengal and Burma, under the name of the MEGHNA river, itself a broad and magnificent sheet of water. Brahma putra in and putra siltislands. The Brahmaputra is famous not only for its vast alluvial Brahmadeposits, but also for the historical changes which have taken place in its course. One of the islands which it has created in its channel out of the silt torn away from the distant Himalayas covers 441 square miles. Every year thousands of acres of new land are thus formed out of mud and sand; some of them destined to be swept away by the inundations of the following year, others to become the homes of an industrious peasantry or the seats of busy river marts. Such formations give rise to changes in the bed of the river, which within a hundred years have completely altered the course of the Brahmaputra through Bengal. In the last century, the stream, on issuing from Assam, bent close round the spurs of the Gáro Hills in a south-easterly direction. This old bed of the Brahmaputra, the only one recognised by Major Rennel in 1765-75, has Great changes in its course. The putra as a now been deserted. It retains the ancient name of Brahmaputra, but during the hot weather it is little more than a series of pools. The modern channel, instead of twisting round the Garo Hills to the east, bursts straight southwards towards the sea under the name of the Jamuná, and is now separated at places by nearly 100 miles of level land from the main channel in the last century. A floating log, or any smallest obstruction, may cause the deposit of a mud island. This formation gives a new direction to the main channel, which in a few years may have eaten its way far across the plain, and dug out for itself a new bed at a distance of several miles. Unlike the Ganges and the Indus, the Brahmaputra is not used for artificial irrigation. But its silt-charged overflow annually replenishes the land. Indeed, the plains of Eastern Bengal watered by the Brahmaputra yield unfailing harvests of rice, with exhausting crops of jute, mustard, and oil-seeds, year after year, without any visible deterioration; and the valley of Assam is not less fertile, although inhabited by a less industrious race. The Brahmaputra is the great high-road of Eastern Bengal and Assam. Its tributaries and bifurcations afford innumerable high-road. waterways, almost superseding roads, and at the same time rendering road-construction and maintenance very difficult. The main river is navigable by steamers as high up as DIBRUGARH, about 800 miles from the sea; and its broad surface is crowded with country craft of all sizes and rigs, from the dug-out canoe and timber raft to the huge cargo ship, with its high bow and stern, its bulged-out belly, and spreading square-sails. The busy emporium of SIRAJGANJ, on its western bank, collects the produce of the surrounding Districts for transBrahma- mission to Calcutta. Fifty thousand native craft, besides river steamers, passed Sirajganj in 1876. The downward traffic consists chiefly of tea (to the value of 1 million sterling), timber, caoutchouc, and raw cotton, from Assam; with jute, oil-seeds, tobacco, rice, and other grains, from Eastern Bengal. In return for these, Calcutta sends northwards by the Brahmaputra, European piece-goods, salt, and hardware; while Assam imports by the same highway large quantities of rice from the Bengal delta. The railway system of India taps the Brahmaputra at Goálanda, but a network of channels supply a cheaper means of transit for bulky produce across the delta to Calcutta. putra traffic. The Gangetic As the Indus, with its feeder the Sutlej, and the Brahmasystem. putra, convey to India the drainage from the northern slopes of the Himalayas, so the GANGES, with its tributary the Jumna, collects the rainfall from the southern slopes of the mountain wall, and pours it down upon the plains of Bengal. The Ganges traverses the central part of those plains, and occupies a more prominent place in the history of Indian civilisation than either the Indus in the extreme west or the Brahmaputra in the extreme east of Hindustán. It passes its whole life to the south of the Himalayas, and for thousands of years has formed a great physical influence in the development of the Indian races. The Ganges issues, under the name of the Bhagirathi, from an ice-cave at the foot of a Himálayan snowbed, 13,800 feet above the level of the sea (lat. 30° 56′ 4′′ N., long. 79° 6' 40" E.). After a course of 1557 miles, it falls by a network of estuaries into the Bay of Bengal. It represents, with its tributaries, an enormous catchment basin, bounded on the north by a section of about 700 miles of the Himálayan ranges, on the south by the Vindhyá Mountains, and embracing 391,100 square miles. Before attempting any description of the functions performed by the Ganges, it is necessary to form some idea of the mighty masses of water which it collects and distributes. But so many variable elements affect the discharge of rivers, that calculations of their volume must be taken as estimates rather than as actually ascertained facts. of the At the point where it issues from its snowbed, the infant stream The is only 27 feet broad and 15 inches deep, with an elevation of growth 13,800 feet above sea level. During the first 180 miles of its Ganges. course, it drops to an elevation of 1024 feet. At this point, Hardwár, it has a discharge, in the dry season, of 7000 cubic feet per second. During the next 1000 miles of its journey, the Ganges collects the drainage of its catchment basin, and reaches Rájmahal about 1170 miles from its source. It has here a high flood discharge of 1,800,000 cubic feet of water per second, Discharge of Ganges. and an ordinary discharge of 207,000 cubic feet; longest duration of flood, about forty days. The maximum discharge of the Mississippi is given at 1,200,000 cubic feet per second.1 The maximum discharge of the Nile at Cairo is returned at only 362,000 cubic feet; and of the Thames at Staines at 6600 cubic feet of water per second. One of the many mouths of the Ganges is 20 miles broad, with a depth, in the dry season, of 30 feet. But for a distance of about 200 miles, the sea face of Bengal entirely consists of the estuaries of the Ganges, intersected by low islands and promontories, formed out of its silt. Hydraulic Manual, by Lowis D'A. Jackson, Hydraulic Statistics. Table 11. The Jumna. Sanctity of the Ganges. Gangetic pilgrimages. In forming our ideas with regard to the Ganges, we must begin by dismissing from our minds any lurking comparison of its gigantic stream with the rivers which we are familiar with in England. A single one of its tributaries, the JUMNA, has an independent existence of 860 miles, with a catchment basin of 118,000 square miles, and starts from an elevation at its source of 10,849 feet above sea level. The Ganges and its principal tributaries are treated of at such length as the nature of this book permits in separate articles under their own names. I must here confine myself to a brief sketch of the work which they perform in the plains of Northern India, and of the position which they hold in the thoughts of the people. Of all great rivers on the surface of the globe, none can compare in sanctity with the Ganges, or Mother Gangá, as she is affectionately called by devout Hindus. From her source in the Himalayas, to her mouth in the Bay of Bengal, her banks are holy ground. Each point of junction of her main stream with a tributary has special claims to sanctity. But the tongue of land where the Ganges unites with her great sister river the Jumna, is the true Prayág, the place of pilgrimage to which hundreds of thousands of devout Hindus repair to wash away their sins in her sanctifying waters. Many of the other holy rivers of India borrow their sanctity from a supposititious underground connection with the Ganges. The ancient legend relates how Gangá, the fair daughter of King Himálaya (Himávat) and of his queen the air-nymph Menaka, was persuaded, after long supplication, to shed her purifying influence upon the sinful earth. The icicle-studded cavern from which she issues is the tangled hair of the god Siva. Loving legends hallow each part of her course; and from the names of her tributaries and of the towns along her banks, a whole mythology might be built up. Her estuary is not less sacred than her source. Ságar Island at her mouth is annually visited by a vast concourse of pilgrims, in commemoration of her act of saving grace; when, in order to cleanse the 60,000 damned ones of the house of Ságar, she divided herself into a hundred channels, thus making sure of reaching their remains, and so forming the delta of Bengal. The six years' pilgrimage from the source to the mouth and back again, known as pradakshina, is still performed by many; and a few devotees may yet be seen wearily accomplishing the meritorious penance of measuring their length' along certain parts of the route. To bathe in the Ganges at the great stated festivals washes away guilt, and those who have thus purified themselves carry back bottles to their less fortu |