Brahmaputra

“ We were now on the heights whence the water flows down to three of the northern tributaries of the Brahmaputra; the third flows to the Chaktak-tsangpo, which runs to the west of Saka-dzong. Here and there the snow, owing to wind, melting and freezing again, has assumed the form of upright blades, two feet high and sharp as a knife. Far to the south appear parts of the Himalayas, and we are here in a grand landscape of wild and fantastic relief. ”

“ Although no peaks of considerable elevation were to be found along the range north of the Brahmaputra, yet it was of geographical importance, as its southern slopes formed the northern watershed of the holy river as far as Lhassa.
The valley enclosed between these two parallel ranges was the most thickly populated part of Tibet. Grass was abundant, and fuel easily [166] obtainable. Thousands of yaks, sheep, and goats could be seen grazing near the many Tibetan camps along the Brahmaputra and its principal tributaries. The trade route of caravans from Ladak to Lhassa followed this valley. ”

“ The Brahmaputra and its channels, together with three minor streams, the Bangali, Karatoya and Atrai, afford admirable facilities for commerce, and render every part of the district accessible to native cargo boats of large burden. The rivers swarm with fish. The former production of indigo is extinct, and the industry of silk-spinning is decaying. There is no town with as many as 10,000 inhabitants, trade being conducted at riverside marts. Nor are there any metalled roads. Several lines of railway (the Eastern Bengal, &c.) , however, serve the district. ”

“ No geography had been able to tell us anything of the country round the source of the Brahmaputra. Only a small number of nomads repair thither yearly to spend a couple of short summer months. Here it is, here in the front of three glacier tongues, that the river so revered by the Hindu tribes begins its course of some 1800 miles through the grandest elevations of the world, from which its turbid volumes of water roll first 97 to the east, then southwards, cutting a wild valley through the Himalayas, and finally flowing south-westwards over the plains of Assam. ”

“ To-day the boundary-line between Bhutan and India lies generally along the summits of the last mountain-chain above the plains. Dense jungle clothes the sides of the hills and descends to meet the upward waves of the Terai Forest, which stretches along the foot of the Himalayas through Assam, Bengal, and Nepal. The mountains are cloven by deep and gloomy ravines through which swift-flowing rivers like the Menass, Raidak, Torsa, and Tista pour their waters to swell the Brahmaputra and the Ganges. ”

“ The River Teesta itself, though only a minor contributor to the Brahmaputra, is nevertheless during the rainy season, when it is fed both by the falling rain and by the melting snows and glaciers of the Kinchinjunga region, impressive in its might and energy. With a force and tumult that nothing could withstand it comes swirling down the valley. ”

“ Those high passes in front of us, the shores of the great Palti lake and the upper Brahmaputra, that we knew not how we should cross, all seemed also to point to a varied adventure, and there was a spice of excitement in the thought of marching through a country, on the resources of which we should have largely to maintain ourselves, while as yet we knew hardly anything of their kind and extent. ”

“ An enormous development of agricultural resources has taken place within the Brahmaputra basin of late years, chiefly in the direction of tea cultivation, as well as in the production of jute and silk. Gold is found in the sands of all its upper tributaries, and coal and petroleum are amongst the chief mineral products which have been brought into economic prominence. During the rains the Brahmaputra floods hundreds of square miles of country, reaching a height of 30 to 40 ft. ”

“ The length of the river is 700 m. to the Dihong junction, and about 1000 in Tibet and eastern Bhutan, above the Dihong. The Brahmaputra, therefore, exceeds the Ganges in length by about 400 m. The bed of the great river maintains a fairly constant position between its extreme banks, but the channels within that bed are so constantly shifting as to require close supervision on the part of the navigation authorities; so much detritus is carried down as to form a perpetually changing series of obstructions to steamer traffic. ”

“ These [Pg 372] are the Brahmaputra, which clove a way through the Himalaya in reaching the Bay of Bengal from Tibet, and the Columbia, which tore the Cascades asunder in making its way to the Pacific. But the slow process of the ages by which the great Asian river won its way to the sea broke its heart and left it a lifeless thing. It emerges from the mountains with barely strength enough to crawl across the most dismal of deltas to lose its identity in the brackish estuaries at its many insignificant mouths. ”

“ The northern portion of Tibet is an arid and wind-swept desert; but in the southern portion the valleys of Lhasa, Shigatse, Gyantse and the Brahmaputra are covered with good soil and groves of trees, well irrigated, and richly cultivated.
The valley of the Brahmaputra (q.v.) , or Yaru Tsang-po or simply Tsang-po—the river has also various local names—is the great arterial valley of southern Tibet. On the south it is bounded by the Himalayas, on the north by a mountain-system still more vast. ”

“ I expected great trouble sooner or later, but I was not sorry I had disobeyed the soldiers' orders and had marched straight into the most forbidden province of the forbidden land.
There is always satisfaction in doing what is forbidden.
The Brahmaputra received three small snow-fed tributaries descending from the steep mountains on either side of us. Where the main stream turned sharply south, a fourth and important tributary, carrying a large volume of water, came down through a gorge from the north-north-east. ”

“ From the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra on the east to that of the Indus on the west, and intervening between the table-land of the peninsula and the foot of the Himalayan slope of the Tibetan plateau, lies the great plain of northern India, which rises at its highest point to about 1000 ft., and includes altogether, with its prolongation up the valley of Assam, an area of about 500,000 sq. ”

“ Sibsagar is the chief centre of tea cultivation in the Brahmaputra valley, which was introduced by the Assam Company in 1852. It contains a large number of well-managed tea-gardens, which bring both men and money into the province. There are also several timber mills. The Assam-Bengal railway serves the southern part of the district, and a light railway connects this line with Kalikamukh on the Brahmaputra, itself an important highway of communication. ”

“ The Brahmaputra annually inundates vast tracts of country. Numerous extensive forests yield valuable timber. Wild animals of all kinds are found. In 1901 the population was 462,083, showing an increase of 2% in the decade. Rice forms the staple crop. Mustard and jute are also largely grown. The manufactures consist of the making of brass and iron utensils and of gold and silver ornaments, weaving of silk cloth, basket-work and pottery. The cultivation of tea has been introduced but does not flourish anywhere in the district. ”

“ HABITAT.—The hilly tracts east of the Brahmaputra, at the head of the Assam valley, the Mishmi hills, in hill Tipperah, Chittagong, and then southwards through Burmah to the hills bordering on the Koladyne river. ”

“ I have been touring of late in Eastern Bengal and Assam. Assam is, next to Kashmir, the most beautiful country in India, but very unhealthy. The huge Brahmaputra winding in and out of mountains and hills, studded with islands, is of course worth one's while to see. ”

“ Black and dark-purple mountains rise around the village, their surface only visible in some places in strips between belts of drift-sand; they are like tiger skins. Near a ridge to the south-west lies a large dune as though it were attached to it.
The order of the day for April 5 was that Muhamed Isa with the hired animals and the baggage should encamp 417 at the point where the Raga-tsangpo flows into the upper Brahmaputra. The rest of us rode up to a small pass, Tsukchung-chang, on a spur of the mountains which extends to the bank of the main river. ”

“ The alluvial deposits of the Brahmaputra and of its tributary streams may be considered as the third general division of lands in Assam. These lands are very extensive, and present every degree of fertility and elevation, from the vast chars of pure sand, subject to annual inundations, to the firm islands, so raised by drift-sand and the accumulated remains of rank vegetable matter, as no longer to be liable to flood. The rapidity with which wastes, composed entirely of sand newly washed forward by the current during floods, become converted into rich pasture is astonishing. ”

“ Both are immense bounding walls; the one to the elevated plains of the Deccan, and the other, to the still more elevated table-land of Central Asia. Carrying out this parallel, the Narbada (Nerbudda) will be found to occupy very much the same position as the Indus, the Sutlej as the Tápti, and the Godaveri as the Brahmaputra. All have their rise high up on their respective table-lands; some branches of the Godaveri rise close to the sources of the Narbada, just as the Indus and the Brahmaputra have their origin somewhere about Lake Manasarowar ”

“ We encamped near the junction of these rivers, on the right bank of the main stream, at an altitude of 16,620 feet. From the Maium Pass a continuation of the Gangri chain of mountains runs first in a South-easterly direction, then due East, taking a line almost parallel to the higher Southern range of the Himahlyas, and forming a vast plain intersected by the Brahmaputra. On the Southern side of the river can be seen minor hill ranges between the river course and the big range with its majestic snowy peaks and beautiful glaciers. ”

“ But whatever the reason may be, there is apparently no record of any Chinese force descending through the Himalayas into the eastern plains of India by any of the many 189 ways afforded by the affluents of the Brahmaputra. We may, I think, rest very well assured that no such attempt could possibly be made by any force other than Chinese, and that it is not likely that it ever will be made by them. ”

“ But a river, belonging to a country, is not fed by its own waters alone. The Tibetan Brahmaputra is a tributary to the Indian Ganges. Contributions have similarly found their way to India's original culture. The Muhammadan, for example, has repeatedly come into India from outside, laden with his own stores of knowledge and feeling and his wonderful religious democracy, bringing freshet after freshet to swell the current. To our music, our architecture, our pictorial art, our literature, the Muhammadans have made their permanent and precious contribution. ”

“ The rivers all pass through the state from north to south, to join the main stream of the Brahmaputra. Some half-dozen are navigable for small trading boats throughout the year, and are nowhere fordable ”

“ The Jukti-la is the watershed between the two headwaters of the Indus, the Tseti-lachen-la between the Sutlej and the Indus, the Surnge-la between the Sutlej and the Nganglaring-tso. Shiar-gang-la and Shang-shung-la lie on the watershed between the Salwin and the Brahmaputra. All the others lie on the great continental watershed between the ocean and the isolated drainage of the plateau. ”

“ Other rivers besides the Indus and the Brahmaputra begin by draining a considerable area north of the snowy range—the Sutlej, the Kosi, the Gandak and the Subansiri, for example. All these rivers break through the main snowy range ere General Himalayan formation is typical. they twist their way through the southern hills to the plains of India. Here the “antecedent” theory will not suffice, for there is no sufficient catchment area north of the snows to support it. ”

“ Other rivers are the Narad and Baral, important offshoots of the Ganges; the Atrai, a channel of the Tista; and the Jamuna, a tributary of the Atrai. Both the Atrai and the Jamuna belong to the Brahmaputra system and are navigable throughout the year for small cargo boats. ”

“ Neither immediately beyond this great bend, nor within it in the Himalayan regions lying north of Assam and east of Bhutan, have scientific investigations yet been systematically carried out; but it is known that the largest of the Himalayan affluents of the Brahmaputra west of the bend derive their sources from the Tibetan plateau, and break down through the containing bands of hills, carrying deposits of gold from their sources to the plains, as do all the rivers of Tibet. ”

“ All these countries are well watered, populous and fertile, with a climate very similar to that of eastern Bengal. The geography of the region in which the mountains of Cochin-China and Siam join Tibet is still imperfectly known, but there is no ground left for doubting that the great river of eastern Tibet, the Tsanpo, supplies the main stream of the Brahmaputra. The two great rivers of China, the Hwang-ho and the Yang-tsze-kiang take their rise from the eastern face of Tibet, the former from the north-east angle, the latter from the south-east. ”

“ The river region comprises the upper courses of the Brahmaputra (Yaru Tsangpo) , the Salween (? Gyama nyul chu) , the Yangtsze (Dre chu) , the Mekong (Nya-lung chu) , and the Yellow River (Ma chu) . Amidst the mountains there are many narrow valleys, partially cultivated from an altitude of 12,000 ft. downwards, with here and there fine forests covering the mountain sides. Villages of high stone built houses are to be found wherever the valley bottoms open out enough to afford a little space for agriculture. ”