Rivers of Myanmar

Myanmar's greatest river is the Ayeyarwady or Irrawaddy River.

There are a few more Myanmar rivers like Myanmar's Salween or Thanlwin river at the Border to Thailand, the Sittoung or Sittang River, emptying the water near Bago into the Andaman Sea. Plus the Mekong River in the north east, the Kaladan River in Rhakine or Arakan which meets the Bay of Bengal at Sittwe and countless small rivers in Myanmar.

The Northern Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady River and Chindwin

Myanmar Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady river is of all the great rivers of Indo-China the greatest. Through Myanmar it flows for a thousand miles, in a broad navigable stream, from the " confluence – in the far north, where, emerging from its mysterious birthplace, it unites with many tributary until pouring into the Andaman Sea through the huge delta. Born in the Himalaya mountains, follow its destiny seaward, and when they sweep down to its water's edge, or tower mistily on its wide horizon. Lessening gradually from altitudes of eternal snow which finally sink with this great Myanmar river into the ocean.

It is no light undertaking to describe this majestic Myanmar River. It's length and volume, its importance as an artery of Myanmar, its rise and fall--these are easily recorded facts. The beauty of its waters, of its hills and forests and precipitous heights, of its vast spaces that bring a calm to the most fretful spirit, of the sunsets that wrap it in beautiful color—these are things for which words are greatly inadequate.

Hundred of years ago the Myanmar wandered down the tributary sources of the Upper Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady river finally to coalesce in the valley of the great river.

Behind Myitkyina, now this great Myanmar 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 Myanmar river, free for the present to go where it lists, flows on in serene untroubled beauty, the central chord 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, this Myanmar river 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. But this Myanmar river 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 Myanmar 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 Myanmar 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 Myanmar river flows through the mountains of the First Defile, whose rocky sides, torn and lacerated, 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 :

The scenery throughout this river defile is sublimely grand and picturesque, but in places awful to contemplate, as one stands watching the trackers, encouraging one another by fiendish yells that echo through the woods and straining every muscle to gain ground as the boat sluggishly quivers through the fierce rapids now running flush with the boat's gunwale. All now depends on the trueness of the towing-line : that gone and we are lost, for the best and strongest swimmer could not live in such places." Returning in March, three months later, the journey was even more fruitful of excitement : " The danger of the defile had in no way been exaggerated. Indeed, as we shot down the impetuous stream every moment seemed to be our last. It was with difficulty the helmsmen kept the boats from being carried round by the violent eddies and whirlpools, and the boatmen rowed their strongest against stream to reduce the terrific pace at which we were being borne by the fierce rapids. Our position was too critical to admit of accurate observation."

These are fearful joys to which the present-day traveler is not subjected ; yet, for the seeker after it, the swift delirium of a race down the river in its turbulent season is an attainable joy any time between May and October.

The Myanmar river, restricted in this portion of its course to a narrow rocky channel, assumes again, though in a less transparent degree, the pure green tint which characterizes it at Myitkyina. On each hand the nobly wooded hills run down in echelon to the river's edge, and there is at all times that play of color characteristic of hills piled behind one another in receding distances.

At frequent intervals the hills send down their tribute to the river in streamlets that babble over great polished boulders and gleam and sparkle in the sunlight. This is their season of security and charm. In the rain season their music swells to a deafening roar as they rush down in cataracts, bringing with them, in helpless chaos, boulders and trees and sand. Near the lower end of the defile the river, winding a narrow and sinuous course through the rocks known as the Elephant, Cow, and Granary, enters on one of its most exquisite passages. The rocks fancifully so named stretch across in a broken line from shore to shore. For half the year they are covered, but in winter they lie exposed, glistening in the sun and revealing the true width of the channel, here scarcely more than eighty yards across, but of unfathomed depth. Their sheer bare sides, of a polished grey-green hue, afford no footing for life ; but on their rugged summits the receding river leaves a thin deposit of rich silt, in which tussocks of vivid grass find a home, their lively beauty enhanced by their grim setting. In the days soon after the war, when the channel was less known, a small steamer came to a violent end amid these dangerous reefs, which in the flawless calm of a winter afternoon present an aspect of placid beauty.

Below the Elephant and Cow the little hamlet of Tamangyi shows out from the leafy hillside, and the river, freed from its iron fetters, lengthens out into a long dreamy reach in which the varied hills and woods and the opalescent clouds that trail like the pinions of another world overhead, attain redoubled beauty. A moment, and the dream sweeps by, the great curtain of the hills folds swiftly back, revealing a distant glimpse of the Shan mountains ; and the waters, sparkling in the broad sunlight, seem visibly to rejoice at the termination of their long and arduous passage through the territories of the First Defile.

Few signs of life greet the Myanmar river traveler between Senbo and Tamangyi. An occasional boat or dugout, a thatched hut high up on the steep declivities, at the lower end some blue-coated Chinese Shan quarrying for stone, a rare pagoda ; such are the faint symptoms of man's dominion. For the rest, a startled otter on the rocks ; a white-headed fish-eagle with keen gaze intent on his prey ; a cormorant poised on a stake and drying his dripping wings with obtrusive philosophy ; a panther swimming hurriedly for life across the fast-flowing river ; the short, quick call of barking deer, or the sullen roar of a tiger making off, up one of the leafy watercourses. All else is loneliness and solitude.

Leaving the hills, the river spreads out to ambitious dimensions, and flowing past the site of ancient Sampenago, receives before it reaches Bhamo the tributary waters of the Taping.

The Second Defile, a few miles below Bhamo the Irrawaddy – Ayeyarwady river, leaving behind it a great mass of Myanmar mountains, gildes into the gorge known as the Second Defile. There are no signs here of a vast accumulation of waters similar to that at the mouth of the defile above. The channel, broader and less obstructed, offers a more adequate highway, and the river is less turbulent in its entry. Yet on all sides there is grim testimony to its power in the pedestals of the surrounding hills, torn, contorted into the most fantastic patterns, and swept bare of every vestige of life to a height of thirty feet.

It is this sense of conflict between elemental forces which, felt intensely here, makes the Second Defile a great spectacle. Near the northern entrance a mighty cliff which turns its worn face to the river speaks with eloquence of the conflict. It rises sheer into the sky from the water's edge, eight hundred feet from its massive foundations made smooth by the constant friction of the speeding river, to the delicate clustering bamboos on its summit. Round its base graceful creepers climb and hang in festoons amid the branches of noble trees. A pagoda in miniature, one of the smallest of the myriads which taper heaven­ward in this land of religion, crowns the top of a small rock at its foot. Its diminutive size throws into relief the great rock scared with the stress of centuries, which towers majestically above it. An instinctive hush settles down on the ship as we race under its shadow, and there is deep silence in the gorge, broken only by the steady paddle-throbs which echo through it like mysterious heart-beats. In this battle-chamber of nature, stamped with the records of a long unceasing strife, the soul of the spectator shrinks into itself, finding no vent in the commonplace.

This, the place of the Great Cliff, is the finest portion of the Second Defile. Soon after leaving it the river sweeps round in more than a semi­circle, to emerge once more in untrammeled splendor at the foot of a rounded hill tinted with reddening grass and not unlike an English down.

Below the defile lie the island and village of Shwegu, through the tree­tops of which gleam the golden spires of many pagodas, the centre of a great annual festival attended by many thousands of pilgrims. An island of green and gold set in the folds of a sunlit river fading away to steel-blue mist at the threshold of the mountains, on the summits of which an army of opal clouds is enthroned, Shwegu is thrice lovely.

Henceforth, till it reaches the Third Defile, the river's course is uneventful, save where, encircling many islands, it receives from China the many-mouthed homage of the Shweli. Yet it never ceases to be beautiful. At evening the sun sinks behind the clear-cut amethyst hills in a blaze of gold, and the hues of sunset pervade the still reaches, slowly changing like chords of some divine music till they pass imper­ceptibly away into the dusk of twilight. Later the stars shine out in the clear winter sky and their light, like quivering spear-points, plays on the face of the waters, hastening on to their union with the sea. The Great Bear climbing the heavens, points coldly northward, where imagination pictures the snows of aeons lying on the summits of mountains on which man has left no footprint. Near by the lights of a small village die out one by one, and a great and brooding silence falls upon hillside and plain. It is midnight on the Irrawaddy – Ayeyarwady river.

Below the picturesque village of Male, enclosed in a red-thorn stockade, this Myanmar river for the third time in its course between the Confluence and the sea forces a right of way through hilly country. Male was once the resting-place of a fugitive queen and for a short time served as a royal capital. In later days it was the Burmese customs-station on the upper river, and in the last days of 1885, when the kingdom of Burma was hastening to its end, a fleet of the king's warboats and steamers lay at anchor at Male, in wild hopes of a French advent across the frontiers of Tonquin. But the French never came, and the last of the house of Alompra was already on his way into exile, followed by his weeping wife and a stricken court, before His Majesty's itinerant ambassadors in Europe had concluded their wanderings in search of an alliance. Leaving Male, the river, confined between low hills, flows in tranquil splendor under the shadow of the Shwe-u-daung, whose bare peak and sharp declivities rise majestically into the sky like the Spanish sierras beyond Gibraltar.

The Shwe-u-daung, nine thousand feet in height, is the outer citadel of that fortress of magnificent mountains in the chambers of which are treasured the finest rubies of the world. Sixty miles inland, in the beautiful Mogok valley, are the famous ruby mines of Myanmar.

Mogok Myanmar itself, surrounded by magnificent peaks like the Pingubaung, seven thousand feet in height and apt to be transfigured at sunset in a glow of red fire suggestive of their priceless contents, is unique in its seclusion and its world-known fame.

The island pagoda set in the heart of the Third Defile is still beautiful; but the fingers of decay are busy with its monastery roofs and spires. Its halls and closets lie empty and deserted. The waters of the river are slowly but certainly eating into the fence of wood and stone, built in an earlier decade to protect the island, and time must bring destruction, The monastery fish, no longer fed by its tenants, no longer protected by their presence from secular attack, have grown wild and timid, and no artifice will now induce them to come when summoned by the familiar call. It is believed that the island, consecrated to religion, can never be flooded, however high the river may rise. The pagoda is still firm on its base, its buildings are still habitable and yet it is silent and untenanted. No one will say why.

At Thihadaw the defile grows to greater beauty. The single line of hills which has confined the river on each hank rises in height and breaks up into a greater variety of groups, through which the river wanders in long reaches and curves as placid and calm as untroubled slumber. At Kabwet village the river emerges in a great curve from the midst of the higher hills and widens out, though still restrained for many a mile by low undulating country, beautiful in December with warm autumn hues, till, at Kyaukmyaung, the Third Defile quietly ends. The view, hitherto confined, now broadens out and far ahead on the river's horizon loom successive spurs of the Shan mountains towering in stately beauty above the distant city of Mandalay.

Here the great defiles of the Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady river end. The river, leaving its infancy and hot strenuous youth behind it, settles down to mature life, till at the delta still many hundred miles distant, its power is broken and lost in the ocean.

For nine hundred miles the Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady Irrawaddy river is navigated by the ships of various sizes since shifting of sandbanks is a continuous problem.

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