volume of water discharged by it during the dry season is about 146,188 cubic feet in a second; the quantity discharged by the Ganges in the same time, and under the same circumstances, is 80,000 cubic feet. In the perennial floods the quantity of water poured through the tributaries of the Brahmapootra from their snowy sources is incredible; the plains of Upper Assam are an entire sheet of water from the 15th of June to the 15th of September, and there is no communication but by elevated causeways eight or ten feet high: the two rivers, with their branches, lay the plain of Bengal under water for hundreds of miles annually. They begin first to swell from the melting of the snow on the mountains, but, before their inferior streams overflow from that cause, all the lower parts of Bengal adjacent to the Ganges and Brahmapootra are under water from the swelling of these rivers by the rains. The increase is arrested before the middle of August, by the cessation of the rains in the mountains, though they continue to fall longer on the plains. The delta is traversed in every direction by arms of the rivers. The Hoogly branch, at all times navigable, passes Calcutta and Chandernagor; and the Hauringotta arm is also navigable, as well as the Ganges, properly so called. The channels, however, are perpetually changing, from the strength of the current, and the prodigious quantity of matter washed from the high lands; the Ganges alone carries to the sea 600,000 cubic feet of mud in a second, the effects of which are perceptible 60 miles from the coast. The elevation of the mountains, and indeed of the land generally, must have been enormous, since it remains still so stupendous after ages of such degradation. The Sunderbunds, a congeries of innumerable river islands formed by the endless streams and narrow channels of the rivers, as well as by the indentations of arms of the sea, line the coast of Bengal for 180 miles, a wilderness of jungle and heavy timber. The united streams of the Ganges and Brahmapootra drain an area of 650,000 square miles, and there is scarcely a spot in Bengal more than 20 miles distant from a river navigable even in the dry season. These three great rivers of Southern India do not differ more widely in their physical circumstances than in the races of men who inhabit their banks, yet from their position they seem formed to unite nations the most varied in their aspect and speech. The tributaries of the Ganges and Indus come so near to each other at the foot of the mountains, that a canal only two miles long would unite them, and thus an inland navigation from the Bay of Bengal to the Gulf of Oman might be established.