The upper portion of Burmah is mountainous. The scenery is among the most beautiful in the world. Plains and mountains, lovely valleys and gaping chasms, present themselves to the wondering eye of the traveller. Now there is a space of level ground, covered with straggling underwood; plants trail along the earth, the high disorderly grass of the jungle waves, and the wild stunted trees stretch their deformed limbs toward heaven, as if to pray that the hand of civilised man might at length relieve them. The waving grass is gone, and we are again amid the mountains, clothed with majestic trees, arching gloriously over the weary traveller’s head, and concealing from his view the wild animals that house there. Such is the greater part of Burmah, thus uninhabited and neglected; such the condition of a region belonging to an unenergetic people; and such it will remain, until the nations can recognise the vast wealth that the gorges and abysses of the mountains contain. Rich and unexhausted is the land; but the race that shall gather its treasures, and turn its wild wastes into populous cities, is not, and will never be, that of the Burman!
The coasts and rivers are well studded with towns and villages, and the busy hum of the healthy labourers is heard everywhere. Yet there is a blank place in the maps for many portions still. No European voice has listened in the wildernesses of the Naga tribes, or in those of the Murroos. The land whence the human race first came is now left silent.
In the maritime portions of the country the year has two seasons,—the dry and the wet. The latter always begins about the tenth of May, with showers gradually growing more frequent, for several weeks. It afterwards rains almost daily until about the middle of September, when it as gradually goes off, and in the course of a month entirely ceases. During this time from one hundred and fifty to two hundred inches of water fall. This is the only time when the country is unhealthy for foreigners, and even then, there are many places where persons may reside with impunity. In other parts of the country there are three seasons. In the highest and wildest provinces there are severe winters.
Amidst these mountain-passes rises the great and sacred river Irawadi, named from the elephant of Indra, which, like the stream of history, flows down from amidst obscurity and uncertainty. The sources of the Irawadi are yet undiscovered; but Lieutenant Wilcox, who explored a considerable portion of Burmah, was informed, that they were not far distant from that of the Burampooter, or Brahmapootra. It has a course of more than twelve hundred miles to the sea; and passing through the whole of the empire, it falls into the Gulf of Martaban, by a great number of mouths, in the kingdom of Pegu. Its breadth varies from one to three, and even five miles in various parts of its course. How different from its narrowest width of eighty yards, at about forty miles from its supposed source.
The river issues from the mountains, and enters an extensive valley, occupied by the tribes of the Khunoongs. At this early point of its course, the country is perfectly level, and is partly cultivated, while the remainder is studded with small woods of bamboo. The Irawadi is little more than eighty yards broad at the town of Manchee, and is quite fordable. The plain of Manchee is 1,855 feet above the level of the sea. After passing through this plain, it runs through countries very little blown to Europeans, for about 120 miles. Rugged mountain-chains here form the banks of the river, sometimes diversified by a plain of some extent.
Bamoo is the first place of consequence on the river after Manchee, and is about 350 miles distant from the latter town. The level of the river falls 1,300 feet between the two places. At some distance from Bamoo, near a village called Kauntoun, the river suddenly turns westwards but soon runs south-west again. A little above Hentha it takes a direction due south, so continuing to Amarapura. From Bamoo to Amarapura the country is only navigable for small boats.
“With the change of the river the face of the country is changed. Issuing from the narrow valley, it enters a very wide one, or rather a plain. Along its banks, and especially on the southern side, the level country extends for many miles, in some places even to thirty, and even then is not bounded by high mountains, but by moderate hills, which increase in height as they recede farther from the river. Considerable portions of these plains are covered by the inundations of the river in the wet season. On the north side of the river the hills are at no great distance from the banks, and here the ground is impregnated with muriate of soda, and with nitre, of which great quantities are extracted.”[3]
The Irawadi now rolls its majestic floods towards the ocean, and receives an accession in the confluence of the Kyan Duayn, a river which first receives that name near the Danghii hills; it then continues its course, and arrives at the former boundary of the kingdoms of Ava and Pegu, the promontory of Kyaok-ta-rau.
“The valley of the Irawadi, south of its confluence with the Kyan Duayn, to the town of Melloon (south of 20° N. lat.), is, in its general aspect, hilly and very uneven; but the hills rise to no great height, at least not near the river, and are in many places separated by tracts of flat country, which in some places are extensive and well cultivated. South of Melloon the hills approach nearer the river, and often form its banks. They are in most places covered with forest trees of considerable size; among which teak-trees are frequent. Cultivation is confined to the narrow flat tracts which here and there separate the hills from the river.”[4]
In this neighbourhood are situated the famous Petroleum wells, at a village called Re-nau-khaung, from three to four miles from the river. Colonel Symes did not visit the interesting spot at that time, but he has given us an excellent idea of the locality, by his brief but vigorous sketch:—