‘The situation of Gour was highly convenient for the capital of Bengal and Bahar, as united under one government; being nearly centrical with respect to the populous parts of those provinces, and near the junction of the principal rivers that compose that extraordinary inland navigation for which those provinces are formed; and, moreover, secured by the Ganges, and other rivers, on the only quarter from which Bengal has any cause for apprehension.’
Here I feel at a loss; for the author has evidently been deficient in that perspicuity which characterizes his work; it does not appear to me what quarter is meant in this instance; the greater part of Bengal being divided from Gour by that same river, the Ganges, which is here described as a protection to Gour against incursions from Bahar. If this be not the Major’s meaning, I can find no other; at all events, the passage is incongruous.
Setting, however, that matter at rest, as being irrelevant on this occasion, I shall proceed to observe, that throughout the Delta of the Ganges, which forms an area of full twenty thousand square miles, (it being nearly a right-angled triangle, whose sides average about two hundred miles,) we have not one vestige of remote date!
It has, no doubt, been asserted by some travellers, and I have heard several of the natives declare, that, in some parts of the Soonderbunds, ruins of great extent are to be seen. These are said to be the remains of cities which formerly flourished on the borders of the ocean, but were abandoned in consequence of the depredations of the Burmans, or Muggs, who inhabited the country lying south of Chittagong, and who have, within the last fifteen years, called to our memory that such a nation was still in existence.
Admitting the existence of such reputed ruins, we have no right to place them to the account of the earlier ages; we have no records of their existence; the whole of the details that have hitherto been offered to the world, either by native traditionists, or European surveyors, give no account of any such fragments; while, on the other hand, every presumption is in favor of the whole Delta being comparatively modern.
Major Rennell, at page 347 of his Memoirs, observes in a note, that ‘a glass of water taken out of the Ganges, when at its height, yields about one part in four of mud. No wonder then that the subsiding waters should quickly form a stratum of earth; or that the Delta should encroach upon the sea.’ If we estimate the course of the Ganges, (setting apart the Barampooter,) at fifteen hundred miles, and take its mean width at half a mile; which is, indeed, reducing that magnificent flow of water to a mere stream, we have then a surface of seven hundred and fifty square miles, of which, one fourth is said to be mud, or matter light enough to be kept suspended by the violence of the current. This should give nearly two hundred square miles of soil.
The foregoing computation proves the Delta to contain twenty thousand square miles; therefore, if Major Rennell’s hypothesis be correct, the whole of the Delta might have been formed in one hundred years; taking the depth of the river, when at its highest, to be equal to the depth of the soil. But, if we recollect that probably many fathoms of sea were filled up by the encroachment that thus took place, we may be correct in allowing ten times that period, i.e. a thousand years, for the completion, or, rather, for the gradual accumulation, of so extensive an addition to the terra firma of Asia.
At page 348, Major Rennell argues very strongly, though unintentionally, perhaps, in support of my hypothesis, that Gour formerly stood on the borders of the ocean, and was, probably the Tyre of Hindostan. He says, ‘As a strong presumptive proof of the wandering of the Ganges, from the one side of the Delta to the other, I must observe, that there is no appearance of virgin earth, between the Tipperah Hills on the east, and the province of Burdwan on the west; nor on the north till we arrive at Dacca and Bauleah.’
Uniting all these points, and agreeing with Major Rennell that the Ganges discharges, on a medium, 180,000 cubic feet of water in a second, we may easily imagine that the present Delta has been formed by the sedimentary portion propelled forward in constant succession, until it gained the highest level to which the annual inundation could raise it; after which, the black mould on the surface must have been produced by the constant accumulation of vegetable matter that rotted thereon.
It is a curious, but well known, fact, that from Sooty to that part of the Cossimbazar Island which lies nearest to the tide’s way, the whole is obliged to be preserved from inundation by an embankment, called the poolbundy, maintained at a very great and regular expence; an obvious demonstration that the present course of the Hooghly has not been settled many centuries; for almost all rivers, long subject to such overflows as those we witness in Bengal, ultimately raise their banks, by an annual deposit of matter, to such a height as afterwards prevents their streams from passing over into the adjacent country.