Page:Provincial geographies of India (Volume 4).djvu/59

CH. IV] 4000 feet. The hills forming the watershed between the Irrawaddy and the Chindwin start in the extreme north and run south-south-west, averaging not more than 1000 feet in height but rising to over 5000 feet in Taungthônlôn in Upper Chindwin. Other ranges of moderate altitudes traverse Lower Chindwin and Sagaing.

The Chin Hills, bordering on Assam and Manipur, have already been mentioned as nothing but a maze of mountains. The main ranges run north and south, the principal being the Letta or Tang, the Inbuklang, and the Kong Klang, varying from 5000 to 9000 feet in height. West of Pakôkku, the southern part of the Chin Hills has heights from 5000 to 7000 feet, with the great peak of Mt Victoria (10,400 feet). In the Arakan Hill Tracts, the heights dwindle to 3000 and 3500 feet, but the best defined range, Kyaukpan-daung, rises to 4500 feet. Taking off from the Chin Hills, skirting Minbu, the Arakan Yoma separates Arakan from the plains of Irrawaddy and ends at Cape Negrais. Other ranges in Arakan are the Mayu, between the Naaf and Mayu rivers, and two ranges between the Kaladan and Mayu.

As pointed out in the chapter on Geology, the orographical relief of Burma is still a rough expression of relatively young earth movements, although the rock folds, since their formation, have been superficially scored and mutilated by recent weather action, and the underground structure has thus been obscured, just as a description of the country must necessarily be obscured by the use of many unfamiliar names. The westward movement of the solid block of old rocks forming the Shan plateau, meeting the southerly creep towards India of the Tibetan plateau, has formed the sigmoidal curves of the Irrawaddy valley, the general north-south trend of the oil-fields, the Arakan and Chindwin ridges and even the western sea shore, all features of relief roughly parallel to one another in direction and at right angles to the great earth movements in which they originated.