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The country between Assam and China is the point from which a number of great rivers, the Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong and Yang-Tze start southwards in parallel courses, finally spreading out into a fan shape which covers the country from the Yellow or China Sea, to the Bay of Bengal.

The rivers run in deep, narrow channels, separated by mountain chains which also run in the same direction, north and south. These ranges, at first sharply defined, gradually widen out and the river valleys widen also, until, with their tributary streams, they form a series of flat bottomed valleys, leaving between the Irrawaddy and the Salween (Fig. 1) a plateau, between 2,000 and 3,000 feet high, known as the Shan plateau.