Page:Provincial geographies of India (Volume 4).djvu/26

10 three districts consists of hilly country, spurs of the Arakan Yoma, the Pegu Yoma and its offshoots, and other less noticeable heights.

From the border of Thayetmyo up to about the latitude of the Third Defile of the Irrawaddy extends the dry zone of Upper Burma. Between the Arakan Yoma and the Chin Hills on the west and the Shan Hills on the east, it includes the whole of the Magwe and Meiktila Divisions (with the exception of the Pyinmana sub-division), the Sagaing Division (except the Upper Chindwin district and the Chin Hills) and the districts of Mandalay and Shwebo. This tract includes wide areas of arid and sterile country sparsely covered with stunted vegetation, broad undulating table lands, rolling downs, barren plains cut up by many deep ravines, with frequent isolated hills rising abruptly from the plains. The Pegu Yoma begins in this area and runs through it from north to south. Elsewhere are other hill ranges. Pakôkku, Lower Chindwin, and parts of the Kyauksè and Mandalay districts are specially hilly country.

It must not be supposed that all this is a desert. Along the rivers are alluvial plains. In Minbu and Kyauksè a large irrigated area is under rice. Shwebo, formerly a dry plain, is now a flourishing rice district. The rice plain of Mandalay covers 700 square miles. On lands unsuitable for rice, products of dry cultivation, millet, sesamum, ground nuts, wheat, are largely grown. The hillsides are often covered with luxuriant forest growth. Sagaing is the only district altogether dry, without relief.

The great rivers Irrawaddy and Chindwin, and their numerous affluents, many of them mere beds of sand in the dry season, occasionally rushing torrents in the rains, as well as rivers of less volume in the east, traverse these dry districts. Meiktila is the only district in Burma, except Putao in the north, with no navigable stream.