Asiatic Rivers—Euphrates and Tigris—River Systems South of the Himalaya—Chinese Rivers—Siberian Rivers.

The only river system of importance in Western Asia is that of the Euphrates and Tigris. In the basin of these celebrated streams, containing an area of 230,000 square miles, immense mounds of earth, in a desolate plain, point out the sites of some of the most celebrated cities of antiquity—of Nineveh and Babylon. Innumerable remains and inscriptions, the records of times very remote, have been discovered by adventurous travellers, and bear testimony to the truth of some of the most interesting pages of history. The Euphrates, and its affluent the Merad-ChaÏ (supposed to be the stream forded, as the Euphrates, by the Ten Thousand in their retreat), rise in the heart of Armenia, and, after running 1800 miles on the table-land to 38° 41' of north latitude, they join the northern branch of the Euphrates, which rises in the Gheul Mountains, near Erzeroum. The whole river then descends in rapids through the Taurus chain, north of Romkala, to the plains of Mesopotamia.

The Tigris rises in the mountains to the N. and W. of Dyarbekir, and after receiving several tributaries from the high lands of Kurdistan, it pierces the Taurus range about 100 miles above Mosul, from whence it descends in a tortuous course through the plain of ancient Assyria, receiving many streams from the Tyari mountains, inhabited by the Nestorian Christians, and, farther south, from those of Luristan. The country through which it flows is rich in cornfields, date-groves, and forest-trees.^[121] Near to the city of Bagdad the Tigris and Euphrates approach to within 12 miles, where they were once connected by two great canals. From this point they run nearly parallel for more than 100 miles, encircling the plain of Babylon or Southern Mesopotamia—the modern Irak-Arabi. The two rivers unite at Korna, and form one stream, which, under the name of Shat-el-Arab, runs for 150 miles before it falls into the Persian Gulf. The banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, once the seat of an extensive population, and of art, civilization, and industry, are now nearly deserted, covered with brushwood and grass, dependent on the rains alone for that luxuriant vegetation which, under an admirable system of irrigation, formerly covered them. Excepting the large centres of population, Bagdad and Mosul, the inhabitants consist of nomade Kurdish tribes. What remains of civilization has taken refuge in the mountains, where the few traces of primitive and most ancient Christianity, under the misapplied denomination of Nestorian Christians, are to be found in the Tyari range. The floods of the rivers are very regular in their period; beginning in March, they attain their greatest height in June.

The Persian Gulf may be navigated by steam all the year, the Euphrates only eight months; it might, however, afford easy intercourse with eastern Asia, as it did in former times. The distance from Aleppo to Bombay by the Euphrates is 2870 miles, of which 2700, from Bir to Bombay, are by water; in the time of Queen Elizabeth this was the common route to India, and a fleet was then kept at Bir, expressly for that navigation.

Six rivers of the first magnitude descend from the southern side of the table-land of eastern Asia and its mountain barriers, all different in origin, direction, and character, while they convey to the ocean a greater volume of water than all the rivers of the rest of the continent conjointly. Of these, the Indus, the double system of the Ganges, and Brahmapootra, and the three parallel rivers in the Indo-Chinese peninsula, water the plains of southern Asia; the great system of rivers that descend from the eastern terraces of the table-land irrigates the fertile lands of China; and lastly, the Siberian rivers, not inferior to any in magnitude, carry the waters of the AltaÏ and northern slope of the table-land to the Arctic Ocean.

The hard-fought battles and splendid victories recently achieved by British valour over a bold and well-disciplined foe have added to the historical interest of the Indus and its tributary streams, now the boundaries of our Asiatic territories.

The sources of the Indus were only ascertained in 1812; the Ladak, the largest branch of the Indus, has its origin in the snowy mountains of Karakorum; and the Shyook, which is the smaller stream, rises in the Kentese or Gangri range, a ridge parallel to the Himalaya, which extends along the table-land of Tibet, north and west of the sacred lake of MÁnasarowar. These two streams join north-west of Ladak and form the Indus; the Sutlej, its principal tributary, springs from the lake of Rakas Tal, which communicates with that of MÁnasarowar, both situated in a valley between the Himalaya and Gangri chain at the great elevation of 15,200 feet. These rivers, fed by streams of melted snow from the northern side of the Himalaya, both flow westward along the extensive longitudinal valley of western Tibet. The Sutlej breaks through the Himalaya about the 75th meridian, and traverses the whole breadth of the chain, in frightful chasms and clefts in the rocks, to the plains of the Punjab; the Indus, after continuing its course on the table-land through several degrees of longitude farther, descends near the junction of the Himalaya and the Hindoo Coosh, west of the valley of Cashmere, to the same plain. Three tributaries—the Jelum or Hydaspes, the Chenab or Acescines, and the Ravee or HydraÖtes, all superior to the Rhone in size—flow from the southern face of the Himalaya, and with the Sutlej (the ancient Hyphasis) join the Indus before it reaches Mittun; hence the name Punjab, “the plain of the five rivers,” now one of the most valuable countries in the East. From Mittun to the ocean, the Indus, like the Nile, does not receive a single accessary, from the same cause—the sterility of the country through which it passes. The Cabul river, which rises near Guzni, and is joined by a larger affluent from the southern declivities of the Hindoo Coosh, flows through picturesque and dangerous defiles, and joins the Indus at the town of Attock, and is the only tributary of any magnitude that comes from the west.

The Indus is not favourable to navigation: for 70 miles after it leaves the mountains the descent in a boat is dangerous, and it is only navigable for steam-vessels of small draught of water; yet, from the fertility of the Punjab, and the near approach of its basin to that of the Ganges at the foot of the mountains, it must ultimately be a valuable acquisition, and the more especially because it commands the principal roads between Persia and India, one through Cabul and Peshawer, and the other from Herat through Candahar. The delta of the Indus, formerly celebrated for its civilization, has long been a desert; but from the luxuriance of the soil, and the change of political circumstances, it may again resume its pristine aspect. It is 60 miles long, and presents a face of 120 miles to the sea at the Gulf of Oman, where the river empties itself by many mouths, of which only three or four are navigable: one only can be entered by vessels of 50 tons, and all are liable to change. The tide ascends them with extraordinary rapidity for 75 miles, and so great is the quantity of mud carried by it, and the absorbing violence of the eddies, that a vessel wrecked on the coast was buried in sand and mud in two tides. The annual floods begin with the melting of the snow in the Himalaya in the end of April, come to their height in July, and end in September. The length of this river is 1500 miles, and it drains an area of 400,000 square miles.

The second group of South Indian rivers, and one of the greatest, is the double system of the Ganges and Brahmapootra. These two rivers, though wide apart at their courses, have their sources little removed from each other, on opposite sides of the central ridge of the Himalaya, and which, converging to a common delta, constitute one of the most important groups on the globe.

Mr. Alexander Elliot, of the Body Guard in Bengal, son of Admiral Elliot, with his friends, are the first who have accomplished the arduous expedition to the sources of the Ganges. The river flows at once in a very rapid stream not less than 40 yards across, from a huge cave in a perpendicular wall of ice at the distance of about three marches from the Temple of Gungoo-tree, to which the pilgrims resort. Mr. Elliot says, “The view from the glacier was perfectly amazing; beautiful or magnificent is no word for it,—it was really quite astonishing. If you could fancy a bird’s-eye of all the mountains in the world in one cluster, and every one of them covered with snow, it would hardly give you an idea of the sight which presented itself.”

Many streams from the southern face of the Himalaya unite at Hurdwar to form the great body of the river. It flows from thence in a south-easterly direction through the plains of Bengal, receiving in its course the tribute of 19 or 20 rivers, of which 12 are larger than the Rhine. About 220 miles in a direct line from the Bay of Bengal, into which the Ganges flows, the innumerable channels and branches into which it splits form an intricate maze over a delta twice as large as that of the Nile.

The Brahmapootra, a river equal in the volume of its waters to the Ganges, may be considered as the continuation of the Dzangho Tchou or river of Lassa, which rises near the sources of the Sutlej and the Indus, in long. 82° E. After watering the great longitudinal valley of eastern Tibet, it makes a sudden bend to the south in long. 90° E., cutting through the Himalaya chain, as the Indus does at its opposite extremity between Iskasdo and Attock; after which it receives several tributaries from the northern mountains of the Birman empire; but very little is known of this part of its basin. The upper part of the Brahmapootra is parallel to the Himalaya chain, until it enters Upper Assam, where, passing through the sacred pool of Brahma-Koond, it receives the name which it bears in the lower part of its course—Brahmapootra, the “off-spring of Brahma:” the natives call it the Lahit, Sanscrit for the “Red River.” In Upper Assam, through which it winds 500 miles, and forms some extensive channel islands, it receives six very considerable accessories, of which the origin is unknown, though some are supposed to come from the table-land of Tibet. They are only navigable in the plains, but vessels of considerable burthen ascend the parent stream as far as Sundiva. Before it enters the plains of Bengal, below Goyalpara, the Brahmapootra runs with rapidity and in great volume, and, after receiving the rivers of Bhotan and other streams, branches of it unite with those of the Ganges about 40 miles from the coast, but the two rivers enter the sea by different mouths, though they sometimes approach within two miles. The length of the Brahmapootra is probably 860 miles, so that it is 500 miles shorter than the Ganges: the volume of water discharged by it during the dry season is about 146,188 cubic feet in a second; the quantity discharged by the Ganges in the same time, and under the same circumstances, is 80,000 cubic feet. In the perennial floods the quantity of water poured through the tributaries of the Brahmapootra from their snowy sources is incredible; the plains of Upper Assam are an entire sheet of water from the 15th of June to the 15th of September, and there is no communication but by elevated causeways eight or ten feet high: the two rivers, with their branches, lay the plain of Bengal under water for hundreds of miles annually. They begin first to swell from the melting of the snow on the mountains, but, before their inferior streams overflow from that cause, all the lower parts of Bengal adjacent to the Ganges and Brahmapootra are under water from the swelling of these rivers by the rains. The increase is arrested before the middle of August, by the cessation of the rains in the mountains, though they continue to fall longer on the plains. The delta is traversed in every direction by arms of the rivers. The Hoogly branch, at all times navigable, passes Calcutta and Chandernagor; and the Hauringotta arm is also navigable, as well as the Ganges, properly so called. The channels, however, are perpetually changing, from the strength of the current, and the prodigious quantity of matter washed from the high lands; the Ganges alone carries to the sea 600,000 cubic feet of mud in a second, the effects of which are perceptible 60 miles from the coast. The elevation of the mountains, and indeed of the land generally, must have been enormous, since it remains still so stupendous after ages of such degradation. The Sunderbunds, a congeries of innumerable river islands formed by the endless streams and narrow channels of the rivers, as well as by the indentations of arms of the sea, line the coast of Bengal for 180 miles, a wilderness of jungle and heavy timber. The united streams of the Ganges and Brahmapootra drain an area of 650,000 square miles, and there is scarcely a spot in Bengal more than 20 miles distant from a river navigable even in the dry season.

These three great rivers of Southern India do not differ more widely in their physical circumstances than in the races of men who inhabit their banks, yet from their position they seem formed to unite nations the most varied in their aspect and speech. The tributaries of the Ganges and Indus come so near to each other at the foot of the mountains, that a canal only two miles long would unite them, and thus an inland navigation from the Bay of Bengal to the Gulf of Oman might be established.

An immense volume of water is poured in a series of nearly parallel rivers of great magnitude, and running in the direction of the meridian through the Indo-Chinese peninsula, to empty themselves into the ocean on either side of the peninsula of Malacca. They rise in those elevated regions at the south-eastern angle of the table-land of Tibet, the lofty but unknown provinces of the Chinese empire, and water the great valleys that extend nearly from north to south with perfect uniformity, between chains of mountains no less uniform, which spread out like a fan as they approach the sea. Scarcely anything is known of the origin or upper parts of these rivers, and, with a few exceptions, almost as little of the lower.

Their number amounts to six or seven, all large, though three surpass the rest—the Irawady, which waters the Birman empire, and falls into the Bay of Bengal at the Gulf of Martaban; the Menam, or river of Siam; and the river Cambodja, which flows through the empire of Annam: the last two fall into the Gulf of Siam and the China Sea.

The sources of the Irawady are in the same chain of mountains with the eastern affluents of the Brahmapootra more to the south. Its course is through countries hardly known to Europeans, but it seems to be navigable by boats before coming to the city of Amarapoora, south of which it enters the finest and richest plain of the empire, containing its four capital-cities. There it receives two large affluents, one from the Chinese province of Yun-nan, which flows into the Irawady at the city of Ava, 446 miles from the sea, the highest point attained by the British forces during the Burmese war.

From Ava to its delta the Irawady is a magnificent river, more than four miles broad in some places, but encumbered with channel islands. In this part of its course it receives its largest tributary, and forms in its delta one of the most extensive systems of internal navigation. The Rangoon is the only one of its 14 mouths that is always navigable, and in it the commerce of the empire is concentrated. The internal communication is extended by the junction of the two most navigable deltoid branches with the rivers SalÜaen and Pegu by natural canals: that joining the former is 200 miles long; the canal uniting the latter is only navigable at high water.

The Menam, one of the largest Asiatic rivers, is less known than the Irawady; it comes from the Chinese province of Yun-nan, and runs through the kingdom of Siam, which it cuts into several islands by many diverging branches, and enters the Gulf of Siam by three principal arms, the most easterly of which forms the harbour of Bangkok. It is joined to the Menam Kong, or Cambodja, by the small river Anan-Myit.

The river of Cambodja has the longest course of any in the peninsula: it is supposed to be the Lantsan-Kiang, which rises in the high land of K’ham, in eastern Asia, not far from the sources of the great Chinese river, the Yang-tse-Kiang. After transversing the elevated plain of Yun-nan, where it is navigable, it rushes through the mountain barriers, and, on reaching a wider valley about 300 miles from its mouth, it is joined to the Menam by the natural canal of the Anan-Myit. More to the south it is said to split into branches which unite again.

The ancient capital of Annam is situate on the Cambodja, about 150 miles from the sea; a little to the south its extensive delta begins, projects far into the ocean, and is cut in all directions by arms of the river, navigable during the floods; three of its mouths are permanently so for large vessels up to the capital. The SaÜng, more to the east, is much shorter than the Cambodja, though said to be 1000 miles long, but Europeans have not ascended higher than the town of Sai-gon. Near its mouth it sends off several branches to the eastern arm of the Cambodja. All rivers of this part of Asia are subject to periodical inundations, which fertilize the plains at the expense of the mountains.

The parallelism of the mountain-chains constitutes formidable barriers between the upper basins of the Indo-Chinese rivers, and decided lines of separation between the inhabitants of the intervening valleys; but this inconvenience is in some degree compensated by the natural canals of junction and the extensive water communication towards the mouths of the rivers.

Four great systems of rivers take their origin on the eastern declivity of the great table-land of central Asia, and running from west to east, traverse the Chinese empire:—the Hong-Kiang, which, rising in the province of Yun-nan, empties itself into the bay of Canton; the Yang-tse-Kiang, or Son of the Ocean; the Hoang-Ho; and the great river of Amur.

The length of the Hoang-Ho is 2000 miles, that of the Yang-tse-Kiang 2900. Though near their sources they are widely separated by the mountain-chains that border the table-land, they approach as they proceed on their eastern course, and are not more than 100 miles apart when they enter the Yellow Sea. From a map constructed by the Jesuit missionaries in the 18th century, it appears that the mouth of the Hoang-Ho or Yellow River has shifted to the enormous distance of 126 leagues from its former position. The Yang-tse-Kiang and the Yellow River, in the lower part of their course, are united by innumerable canals, forming the grandest system of irrigation and of internal navigation in existence.

The Hoang-Ho brings down so large a quantity of earthy matter to the sea, that, like the Tiber of old, it is called the “Yellow” River.

Strong tides ascend these rivers to the distance of 400 miles, and for the time prevent the descent of the fresh water, which forms large interior seas frequented by thousands of trading-vessels, and they irrigate the productive lands of central China, from time immemorial the most highly cultivated and the most densely-peopled region of the globe.

Almost all the Chinese rivers of less note—and they are numerous—feed these giant streams, with the exception of the Ta-si or Hong-Kiang and the Pee-ho or White River, which have their own basins. The former, rising to the east of the town of Yun-nan, flows through the plains of Canton eastward to the Gulf of Canton, into which it discharges itself, increased in its course by the Sekiang.

The White River, rising in the mountains near the Great Wall, becomes navigable a few miles east of Pekin, unites with the Eu-ho, joins the Great Canal, and, as the tide ascends it for 80 miles, it is crowded with shipping.

The Amur, the sources of which are partly in the Russian dominions, though its course is chiefly in the Mantchoo territory of China, is 2000 miles long, including its windings, and has a basin of 853,000 square miles. Almost all its tributaries come from that part of the Baikalian group called the Yablonnoi Khrebit by the Russians, and Khing-Khan-Oola by the Chinese. The river Onon, which is the parent stream, has its origin in the Khentai Khan, a branch of the latter; and though its course is through an uninhabited country, it is celebrated as being the birthplace and the scene of the exploits of Tshingis Khan. After passing through the lake of Dalai-nor, which is 210 miles in circumference, it takes the name of Argun, and forms the boundary between the Chinese and Russians for 400 miles; it is then joined by the Shilka, where it assumes the Tunguse name of the Amur or Great River: the Mandchoos call it the Sagalin or Black Water. It receives most of the unknown rivers which come from the mountain-slopes of the Great Gobi, and falls into the Pacific opposite to the island of Sagalin, after having traversed three degrees of latitude and thirty-three of longitude.

Three great rivers, the Lena, the Yenessei, and the double system of the Irtish and Oby, not inferior in size to any of the rivers of Asia, carry off the waters of the AltaÏ chain, and of the mountains which bound the northern border of the great Asiatic table-land. The Lena, whose basin occupies 800,000 square miles, springs from mountains north of the Lake of Baikal, and runs north-east through more than half its course to the Siberian town of Yakutzk, the coldest town on the face of the earth, receiving in its course the Vitim and the Olekma, its two principal affluents, the former from the Baikal mountains, the latter from Stannovoi Khrebit, the most southerly part of the Aldan range. North of Yakutzk, about the 63d degree of latitude, the Lena receives the Aldan, its greatest tributary, which also comes from the Stannovoi Khrebit; it then goes to the Arctic Ocean, between banks of frozen mud, prodigious masses of which are hurled down by the summer floods, and bring to view the bones of those huge animals of extinct species which at some remote period had found their nourishment in these desert plains. The length of the Lena, including its windings, is 1900 miles.

A difference in the pressure of the air has been observed on the banks of this river, on the shores of the Sea of Okhotzk, and at Kamchatka; which indicates that in the distance of five degrees of latitude there is an apparent difference in the level of the sea amounting to 139 feet.^[122] A similar phenomenon was observed by Captain Foster near Cape Horn, and by Sir James Ross throughout the South Polar Ocean.

The Yenessei, a much larger river than the Lena, drains about 1,000,000 square miles, and is formed by the union of the Great and Little Kem. The former rises at the junction of the Sayansk range, with the Baikalian mountains to the north-west of Lake Kassagol; the latter comes from the Egtag or Little AltaÏ, in quite an opposite direction, so that these two meet nearly at right angles, and take the name of Yenessei; it then crosses the Sagaetses range in cataracts and rapids, entering the plains of Siberia below the town of Krasnojarsk. Below this many rivers join it, chiefly the Angara from the Lake Baikal; but its greatest tributaries, the Upper and Lower Tunguska, both large rivers from the Baikalian mountains, join it lower down, the first to the south, the latter to the north of the town of Yeniseisk, whence it runs north to the Icy Ocean, there forming a large gulf, its length, measured along its bed, being 2500 miles.

The Oby rises in the Lake of Toleskoi, “the Lake of Gold,” in Great Tartary; all the streams of the Lesser AltaÏ unite to swell it and its great tributary the Irtish. The rivers which come from the northern declivity of the mountains go to the Oby, those from the western side to the Irtish, which springs from numerous streams on the south-western declivity of the Little AltaÏ, and run westward into Lake Zaidzan, 200 miles in circumference. Issuing from thence, it takes a westerly course to the plain on the north of Semipolatinsk. In the plain it is joined by the Tobol, which crosses the steppe of the Kirghiz Cossacks from the Ural Mountains, and soon unites with the Oby; the joint stream then proceeds to the Arctic Ocean in 67° N. lat. The Oby is 2000 miles long, and the basin of these two rivers occupies a third part of Siberia.

Before the Oby leaves the mountains, at a distance of 1200 miles from the Arctic Ocean, its surface has an absolute elevation of not more than 400 feet, and the Irtish, at the same distance, is only 72 feet higher; both are consequently sluggish. When the snow melts they cover the country like seas; and as the inclination of the plains in the middle and lower parts of their course is not sufficient to carry off the water, those immense lakes and marshes are formed which characterize this portion of Siberia.

The bed of the Oby is very deep, and there are no soundings at its mouth; hence, the largest vessels might ascend at least to its junction with the Irtish. Its many affluents also might admit ships, did not the climate form an insurmountable obstacle the greater part of the year. Indeed all Siberian rivers are frozen annually for many months, and even the ocean along the Arctic coasts is rarely disencumbered from ice; therefore these vast rivers never can be important as navigable streams; but towards the mountains they afford water communication from the steppe of Issim to the Pacific. They abound in fish and water-fowl, for which the Siberian braves the extremest severity of the climate.

Local circumstances have nowhere produced a greater difference in the human race than in the basins of the great rivers north and south of the table-land of eastern Asia. The Indian, favoured by the finest climate, and a soil which produces the luxuries of life, intersected with rivers navigable at all seasons, and affording easy communication with the surrounding nations, attained early a high degree of civilization; while the Siberian and Samoide, doomed to contend with the rigours of the polar blasts in order to obtain mere existence, have never risen beyond the lowest grade of humanity; but custom softens the rigour of this stern life, so that even here a share of happiness is enjoyed.