Page:Narratives of the mission of George Bogle to Tibet.djvu/35

Rh mmm xzs COUKSE OF THE BEAHMAPUTEA. [Intr. and becomes the Brahmaputra of the plains. Yet there can be no reasonable doubt that the Tsanpu of Great Tibet and the Brahmaputra of the plains are one and the same river. ' The question has occupied the attention of geographers for upwards of a century. In his instructions, dated 1774, Warren Hastings specially enjoined Mr. Bogle to inform himself respecting the course of the Brahmaputra.^ D'Anville, and afterwards Klaprothj believed that the Tibet river was the upper course of the Irrawaddy. But there never appears to have been any doubt, among English geographers, that Rennell was correct in his identification of the Tsanpu with the Brahmaputra. In 1825 Captains Burlton and Wilcox were sent to explore its course. Burlton followed up the course of the Dihong, until he was stopped by wild tribes, while Wilcox crossed the water parting towards Burma, and reached the banks of the Irrawaddy.^ From the point reached by Burlton on the Dihong, to the place where Manning crossed the Tsanpu, there is an interval of about 400 miles, and a difference of level of 11,000 feet, which is entirely unknown. On the south the Great Tibetan valley of the Tsanpu is bounded by the Central Range of the Himalaya, the culmi- nating peaks of which are covered with eternal snow, while the sides bear the weight of enormous glaciers. But the snow line on the Central Chain is much higher than that on the Southern Himalaya. As the snow is deposited by southerly winds it falls mainly on the culminating ridge which faces the south, and screens the central ridge behind it. Thus the snow line is 5000 feet lower down on the Southern Himalaya than on the Central Chain. From this latter Range many lofty saddles branch in several directions, in some places forming inland lakes, in » See p. 9. ^ See ' Asiatic Eesearches,' xviii. p. 314, for the ■work of Wilcox and his colleague. In this paper Wilcox re- plied to Klaproth, and maintained that the Dihong was the Tsanpu. He was never answered by Klaproth, who died in 1835. Subsequently, both Pemberton and Hodgson received native informa- tion identifying the Brahmaputra and Dihong with the Tsanpu.