Page:Notes of a journey across the Isthmus of Krà.pdf/30

 trends gradually away to the east in passing southwards. The prevailing direction of the main ranges of hills, and consequently of the rivers, is also meridional. Through and across the line of the outer ridge, the general drainage of the country is discharged by a series of gorges or narrow rocky channels, through which the main rivers pass. All these gorges have a common direction, nearly east and west, although the general drainage of the country, and the course of the main streams, is almost invariably north and south. The rivers that will have to be chiefly dealt with are the Pakchan, on the British side, and the Tseompyoon, on that of the Siamese. The latter rises a little above the village of Tasan, at the foot of a low range of hills; the Parchan has its sources in the angle formed by the main range and an offshoot of lofty hills which form the water-parting between the Maleewoon and Lengya tracts. For the first fifteen miles of its course, the Pakchan is an ordinary mountain torrent, but as it receives the drainage brought down by numerous affluents from the hills which bound its valley, it gradually broadens, tilt at Krà it is 250 feet wide. Seven miles lower down, the Namoy stream joins it, and then it widens to nearly 400 feet. From this place it increases in width as it nears the sea, till, at its mouth, it is two and a quarter miles from shore to shore. Its appearance for the last ten miles, from where the Maleewoon river joins it, is more like an inlet of the sea than anything else. From its source to Krà is thirty miles, and the direction followed is south-west. From Krà to its junction with Namoy, its course is tortuous, along the base of hills which descend to its northerly bank in four or five different slopes. But, from where the waters of the Namoy are received, it flows in an almost straight direction to Victoria Point, the cape which has to be rounded by the voyager to the Malliwan tin-mining districts. In the dry season the bed of the stream above Krà is almost dry, and below this, as the tide runs out, flats and sand-banks appear, leaving at last a small channel, thirty feet wide and some three feet deep. Below the mouth of the