Through the Buffer state : a record of recent travels through Borneo, Siam and Cambodia / by John Macgregor.
- MacGregor, John, 1848-1932
- Date:
- 1896
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Through the Buffer state : a record of recent travels through Borneo, Siam and Cambodia / by John Macgregor. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![I was familiar enough at one time with the Irrawaddy, the beautiful river that flows through Burmah from one end to the other, and was with the first expedition that ever ascended so far up as Mougoung, some ten or eleven hundred mi]es by river from the sea, and till then never visited by Europeans. And over the greater portion of it I sailed several times. But judging of the Mekong at Penhom-Penh, I should think it is fully as large, or even larger than the Irrawaddy, while no one knows precisely how long either of them may be, as the remote sources of both alike are hidden among the mists and mysteries of the mountains of Thibet, flowing and tumbling among those undiscovered glens and gullies, from whose bourne no European traveller has as yet returned. But while giving the Mekong the credit of being pro- bably larger, it is neither so straight nor so navigable as the Irrawaddy. There are twists and turns in both of them, of course, as in every other river in the world, but those in the Irrawaddy are comparatively few, while the navigation of the Mekong is also much marred by the rapids that occur further up in its course. The Irrawaddy, too, splits and squanders less than the Mekong, and keeps pretty well together till quite near the Bay of Bengal, whereas the Mekong splits nearly as high up as Penhom-Penh itself. This point, however, is in favour of the Mekong, for even after giving off this large and navigable offshoot, it still remains a large river itself, and navigable to deep-draught vessels all the way to the above-mentioned city. Indeed, the captain of the ' Nam-vian' said that the ship drew sixteen feet of water, and there is no steamer of the Irra- waddy Flotilla Company with anything near this draught. But the whole of this portion of the country, like the greater portion of Lower Siam, is entirely rich alluvial soil, amply supplied with natural waterways, being cut up in every direction with quite a network of intercommuni- cation. The c Nam-vian' was comfortable enough, and had none of those unwieldy ' flats' on either side of her that so seriously impede one's speed up the Irrawaddy, or at any rate that used to do so once upon a time. The captain of her also spoke English, which was another point in the p](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21171919_0247.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
