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| 0367 |
Southern Tibet : vol.1 |
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Further on ¹ he again remarks that the river of Siam comes, to the greatest part, from
Lago di Chiamay. On account of the great volume of water this river carries down,
the Siamese call it Menam, that is so much as »Mother of the Waters«. Then it
falls into the sea.²
The text, therefore, leaves no room for a doubt, so far as all the rivers, ex-
cept one, are concerned. As to the Irrawaddi there can be no mistake, for it flows
through Ava and Pegu. But Gastaldi's map, Pl. XVI, illustrating the text, does not
agree with Barros' description. The map has only four rivers leaving the lake, the
text speaks of six, of which the three to the east join and form the Menam, which
on the map is only one single river the whole way. The three western rivers go
to the Gulf of Bengal. One of them, the one farthest west, traverses the Kingdom
of Caor. On its right bank are the cities of Caor and Comotay. Above Chatigan
it enters the delta of the Ganges, which it joins at the Ganges-branch on which the
city of Bengala is placed. Consulting only Gastaldi's map of 1550, it would be
impossible to tell whether this river is meant to be the Meghna or the Brahmaputra
or anything else. The second eastwards is the Irrawaddi, and the third is, as in-
dicated by Martaban, Salwen, though its mouth in relation to Tawa and Pegu is mis-
represented on the map.
If we remember for a moment the long and hard fight about the source and
origin of the Brahmaputra, and that only in our days the transverse valley through
which it pierces the Himalaya has been absolutely settled, though situated so near Cal-
cutta, we should not feel surprised that 360 years ago mistakes were committed by
those who first heard of these rivers and the countries they crossed. The geographers
of generations had to accept the hydrography which Barros with the whole pondus
of his name had given, and the mysterious lake with its four rivers crystallized out
on the maps, and was impossible to be got rid of until a later time came with fresh
information. And still we have to confess that certain parts of the course of Salwen-
Lu-chiang and of the Mekong—Lan-tsan-chiang are unknown. The latter river, how-
ever, is, on Gastaldi's map in Ramusio, the first to the east, which, under the name
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