[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 1.] India is so vast a country, and so varied, that no traveller can hope to visit all parts of it. On our journey from Calcutta to Darjeeling, we have left the province of Assam away to the east of us. Assam is a through road nowhither, for high and difficult mountains close the eastern end of its great valley. Moreover, though it has vast natural resources, Assam is a country which throughout history has lain for the most part outside Indian civilisation, and, even to-day, has but a sparse population and a relatively small commercial development. Let us, then, just remember in passing that this remote province of India has a geography which, though simple, is built on a very grand scale.
The San-po river rises high on the plateau of Tibet northward of Lucknow. For more than 700 miles it flows eastward over the plateau in rear of the Himalayan peaks; then it turns sharply southward and descends steeply through a deep gorge little known, for it is tenanted by hostile tribes. Where it emerges from the mountains the river has a level not a thousand feet above the sea, and here, turning westward, it forms the Brahmaputra—that is to say, the Son of Brahma, the Creator. The Brahmaputra flows for 450 miles westward through the valley of Assam, deeply trenched between the snowy wall of the Himalayas on the one hand and the forested mountains of the Burmese border and the Khasia and Garo hills on the other hand. The river “rolls down the valley in a vast sheet of water,” depositing banks of silt at the smallest obstruction, “so that islands form and re-form in constant succession. Broad channels break away and rejoin the main river after wide divergences, which are subjected to no control. The swamps on either hand are flooded in the rainy season, till the lower reaches of the valley are one vast shining sea, from which the hills slope up on either side.” The traffic on the river is maintained chiefly by exports of tea and timber, with imports of rice for the labourers on the tea estates. Some day, when great sums of money are available for capital expenditure, the Brahmaputra will be controlled, and Assam will become the seat of teeming production and a dense population. The Indian Empire contains some 300 million people; but, as we learn, it also contains some of the chief virgin resources of the world.