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Behind Myitkyina this great river fading into the
blue distance, there tower up like " Breasts of
Sheba " the twin peaks of Loi Lem .and Loi Law,
and behind these again there fade away into the
empyrean the mountains of the north, upon which
there is a gleam of snow.
It is one of the most
beautiful and most satisfying voyages in the
world, this swift descent down the upper waters
of the Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady. The keen ozone of
a perfect air, the broad winter sunlight
flooding a landscape of romantic beauty, the
sense of encompassing infinity, fill the blood
with a supreme vitality, and lift the soul into
regions of exquisite peace.
The great Irrawaddy river,
flows in serene untroubled beauty, the
central chord of Myanmar in a grand harmony of nature.
Overhead there is a flawless sky, and on every
hand the mountains stretch away to the uttermost horizon in shades of color ; from
tints so faint that they are scarcely to be
known from the ether beyond, to the rich purples
of near peaks and the deep blue-greens of
heavily wooded spurs which reach down to the
water's edge, laving their uncovered foundations
in the stream.
At points like these in its
course, where the dense shadows fall on the
seemingly motionless waters of the Irrawaddy or
Ayeyarwady , it
presents its most characteristic and beautiful
aspects, resembling some still mountain lake.
Sixty-five miles
below Myitkyina, the Mogaung river, emerging
from between low flat banks, clothed in giant
grass, pours its tributary waters into the
Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady river. It flows through a
district fruitful in serpentine and amber and
India rubber, inhabited by a medley of hill
tribes of kindred origin, whose truculence and
savagery long prevented its being opened up.
The
town of Mogaung has earned an unenviable
notoriety as a penal settlement. Banishment to
Mogaung was almost the greatest misfortune that
could overtake a Burman official in disgrace
under the old regime:
Near it is the Indawgyi
Lake, from which the Mogaung river derives a
portion of its waters, and a legend of the
country tells the old tale of an ancient city at
its bottom, suddenly engulfed. Soon after the
union of the Mogaung and the Irrawaddy -
Ayeyarwady river a new range comes prominently
into view, broadening out into a beautiful
amphitheatre of blue hills, at the foot of which
the united stream must seemingly come to eternal
pause and makes a grand
south-westerly sweep, and there presently
becomes visible in the vicinity of the Shan-Talok
village of Senbo, the great gorge through
which it must pass, known in the nomenclature of
the river as the First Defile.
Here in
the shadow of the hills spreads a vast
receiving-basin in which its waters must
perforce stay their course, since the narrow and
circuitous defile is all too small for the broad
stream. At this, in the winter season, the river
threads its way far down amid the sands which in
flood-time form the bottom of an immense lake.
There can, indeed, be few more magnificent
episodes in the life of a river than
this. For when, swollen with melting snow and
heavy rain, it rushes turbulently seaward in
obedience to the first law of its being, it is
here suddenly checked in its course by the iron
hand of the Myanmar Himalaya mountains. Signs of
its terrible recoil are evident on every side.
The spectator
standing under the barbed frieze of the military
outpost near Senbo and looking down, first on
the now quiet river and then across a
yawning interval to the opposite heights,
realizes something of its greater life. Far
above the present limit of its waters, to a
height of eighty feet, marking the woods with an
even line in testimony to its dominion, the
river climbs in its session of wrath. In a
single night it rises fifty feet, as though it
would sweep the mountains before it, and at such
times the defile within is a mad inferno of
waters in which no boat can live.
For thirty-five
miles the river flows through the
mountains of the first Defile, whose rocky
sides lie bare in winter,
the embodiment of savagery. This is more
especially the case at one point, the most
dangerous in the entire defile, where the black
rocks rise sheer out of the river's bed,
threatening destruction. Through them there has
been cut a passage, now high above water-level,
for the slow country boats, which formerly
performed the perilous duty of carrying the
mails in the flood season.
From May to
October the defile is entirely closed to
steamers, and even for country boats the
service is one of danger. The journey up-stream
is then sometimes of three weeks' duration ; the
descent is a matter of six hectic hours, so
fierce is the current. Strettell, who made both journeys at a
comparatively quiet season, left of the journey
up-stream the following account :
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Gold washer at the river banks |
