The romantic East: Burma, Assam, & Kashmir - Khamkoo

ASSAM 117
peaks of the Himalayas seen on a clear day N.N.E.
from Nigri Ting ("Slave-girl Hill") are over a
hundred miles away, but they appear to be only a
quarter of that distance. The Brahmaputra is
several miles broad after
the rains, but in the cold
weather one bank is
frequently steep
while the
other consists of chars of pure sand left by the
receding flood. The steep banks are over-grown
with reeds and grasses, while the borders of the
sand-banks are strewn with black chips guarded by
a tiny wading-bird. The banks seem in the clear
air
to be about 10 feet high, and the reeds about
3 feet, when suddenly through an opening at the
base of the reeds walks a full-grown man, and you
find by the comparative height that the banks are
50 to 60 feet high and the reeds from 15 to 18 feet.
Examined with your glasses
the black chips turn
into snub-nosed and sharp-nosed crocodiles (usually
called alligators here), while the wader may be a
bird as tall as a man.
As the Dutch reckoned the run of the canalboats
by the number of pipes smoked, so the
Assamese are said to estimate distances by the
number of "chews." This may
account for the