The steamboat did not ascend the Rangoon River to the Irrawaddy, but passed through a channel known as Bassein Creek, which shortened the distance, and gave a better depth of water than the river. It was not till the day after leaving Rangoon that they entered the great river of Burmah, the Irrawaddy, which is about 1500 miles long, and is said to be the fourth in the world in the volume of water brought down by its current. In the latter part of its course it is nearly four miles wide, and at Bhamo, 1000 miles from the sea, it is not less than a mile from one bank to the other. It rises in the Himalaya Mountains, east of Thibet, and has a course that is generally southerly, though in one place it makes a large bend like the letter S, and in another it turns sharply from the south to the west. It is navigable for more than 1000 miles for boats drawing not over three feet of water, and it is open for the entire year.
The river is subject to great floods, and in the months of May and June the water is frequently forty feet above the lowest stage. In the dry season the channel is crooked and the current very rapid, but when the river is up the pilots pay little attention to the channel, but steer straight on, pretty much as they like.
NATIVE BOAT ON THE IRRAWADDY.
The boys were much interested in the novel sights of the great river; they endeavored to keep an account of the number of native boats, but finally gave up the effort, as the craft were too numerous to be counted, and allow time for seeing anything else. The boats were of all sizes and kinds; they were generally built of teak, the best timber in the world for ships, and they rose high out of water at both bow and stern. They were generally roofed over in the centre and at the stern, and sometimes there were two or three roofs of different heights. The steersman was elevated under a canopy over the stern, and at a little distance he resembled an idol in a shrine.
Many of the boats had tall masts for carrying a single square sail, such as the Chinese use, and of course they were not able to sail much into the wind. The captain told the boys that he had seen boats on the river with yards more than 100 feet long, and that 120 pulleys were needed to handle the sails properly. The larger boats had upper and studding sails, but all the rest had only the square sail.
