An immense volume of water is poured in a series of nearly parallel rivers of great magnitude, and running in the direction of the meridian through the Indo-Chinese peninsula, to empty themselves into the ocean on either side of the peninsula of Malacca. They rise in those elevated regions at the south-eastern angle of the table-land of Tibet, the lofty but unknown provinces of the Chinese empire, and water the great valleys that extend nearly from north to south with perfect uniformity, between chains of mountains no less uniform, which spread out like a fan as they approach the sea. Scarcely anything is known of the origin or upper parts of these rivers, and, with a few exceptions, almost as little of the lower. Their number amounts to six or seven, all large, though three surpass the rest—the Irawady, which waters the Birman empire, and falls into the Bay of Bengal at the Gulf of Martaban; the Menam, or river of Siam; and the river Cambodja, which flows through the empire of Annam: the last two fall into the Gulf of Siam and the China Sea. The sources of the Irawady are in the same chain of mountains with the eastern affluents of the Brahmapootra more to the south. Its course is through countries hardly known to Europeans, but it seems to be navigable by boats before coming to the city of Amarapoora, south of which it enters the finest and richest plain of the empire, containing its four capital-cities. There it receives two large affluents, one from the Chinese province of Yun-nan, which flows into the Irawady at the city of Ava, 446 miles from the sea, the highest point attained by the British forces during the Burmese war. From Ava to its delta the Irawady is a magnificent river, more than four miles broad in some places, but encumbered with channel islands. In this part of its course it receives its largest tributary, and forms in its delta one of the most extensive systems of internal navigation. The Rangoon is the only one of its 14 mouths that is always navigable, and in it the commerce of the empire is concentrated. The internal communication is extended by the junction of the two most navigable deltoid branches with the rivers Salüaen and Pegu by natural canals: that joining the former is 200 miles long; the canal uniting the latter is only navigable at high water. The Menam, one of the largest Asiatic rivers, is less known than the Irawady; it comes from the Chinese province of Yun-nan, and runs through the kingdom of Siam, which it cuts into several islands by many diverging branches, and enters the Gulf of Siam by three principal arms, the most easterly of which forms the harbour of Bangkok. It is joined to the Menam Kong, or Cambodja, by the small river Anan-Myit.