present highway, is an old royal canal cut by a bygone
king of Pagan. It silted up and for centuries it
COMING ON BOARD
remained unused, till in 1824 a great flood came and
cut a new passage through it.
This arm of the Chindwin now enters the Irrawaddy
at an acute angle, and the land between is low. Hence,
for some distance from the apex, the two rivers look
as if they ran parallel to each other. From the bridge
of a Chindwin boat, the funnels of the great steamers
on the Irrawaddy can be seen racing over the level of
the fields; the town of Mingyan gleams on the far
eastern shore ten miles away, and the farthest bank of
390
the great river can be traced from the mid current of
its feudatory. At high floods the narrow peninsula
between them is submerged, and tree-tops, and hamlet
roofs, alone mark the division between.
Leaving the Irrawaddy in the early dawn of an
October morning, I am well into the Chindwin, whose
scenery comes with a sudden transition upon me, accus*
tomed since I left the wide spaces of the Delta to
meridian mountain-chains, to lines of broken, irregular
hills, high cliffs, and a rolling undulating country. For
here, at the mouth of the Chindwin, the Delta, it would
seem, begins again. Blue hills are still happily visible ,
but the main impression is of flat lands, and groves of
THE CHINDWIN AT MINGINtufted
-palms, and umbrageous sheltering trees ; and a
narrow river unbroken from one low shore to the other.