British Burma and its people: being sketches of native ... - Khamkoo

Physical Geography.
'The first showers of rain fill the numerous
" engs " or depressions scattered over the country,
and these, gradually enlarging, submerge the country
before the turbid floods of the rivers
have risen to a
similar height
(forty feet above their summer level).
In default of any effective drainage, the ground adjoining
the rivers being higher than the flooded
interior, the ordinary rainfall is usually adequate to
produce this effect ;
but the low land skirting the hills
receives in addition considerable though irregular
supplies through streams which, pouring out from
the hills, diffuse themselves over the country, and lose
themselves in the plains. The turbid waters of the
Irrawaddy (or other rivers) now rising, top their
banks ; but their course is soon arrested by the limpid
water of the plains, which opposes a perfect barrier
to the spread of the river water, charged with sediment,
over the low country.'
This regular and complete inundation of a whole
country from one range of hills to another, not as an
accidental occurrence, but as a yearly recurring
event, affords one of the most singular phenomena of
Burma. With the exception of high knolls standing
up here and there, and a strip of high ground at the
base of the hills, the whole country, fields, roads,
bridges, are under water from one to twelve feet or
'
Theobald, Geology of Pegu.