176

INDIA

altogether far more suitable to European life. To
understand the trade relations between Burma and the
far east, which promises to develop into a question of
national interest quite as great as that of the Nile Valley,
certain broad features of the geography of this part
of Asia should be noted.
In the high altitudes of Eastern Tibet, bordering on
Chinese territory (or rather on China, for Tibet is itself a
dependency of China), there is a central gathering of the
sources of great rivers, similar to that which exists near
the Manasarawar Lake in Western Tibet. From this great
eastern point of departure two gigantic rivers start for
China. One, the Hoang Ho, or Yellow River, drains and
waters all Northern China, and is the great waterway
from Eastern Tibet to Pekin. The other, the Yang-tse-Kiang,
 is the great commercial highway of all Central
China, and it is by the Yang-tse-Kiang that half of China
lives. It is the main trade artery from which subsidiary
lines take off. Two other great rivers also find their
beginnings near this centre—the Mekong, the river of
Siam, which has lately assumed political importance in
connection with French expansion from Tonkin; and the
Salwin, the river of the Shan states of Eastern Burma.
Neither of these two rivers are navigable for any great
distance, and they are not in themselves trade routes, but
they mark important points on the line of east and west
connection, and their small tributaries are important, as
‘ndicating possible means of developing a continuous
route across their main line of drainage.
For hundreds of miles in their upper courses, where
they are lost in the mass of hills to the north-west of
Burma, the Salwin, the Mekong, and the Yang-tse-Kiang
travel on parallel lines in narrow troughs, separated from
each other by what are apparently (for we only know this
country imperfectly) single ranges of precipitous mountains.
 Between this triad of rivers and the great bend
in the Brahmaputra north-east of Assam there is a
massive (but not a broad) band of rugged, forest-clad
mountains, and it is amongst the recesses of these moun-