Bassein river. Another main channel finds the sea at China Bakir, as the To or China Bakir. Other principal prongs of the Irrawaddy are the Pyawmalaw, the Shwelaung, later the Kyunpyat-that, the Yazudaing and the Kyaiklat or Pyapôn. The stream which reaches the sea as the Irrawaddy flows through Myaungmya till in its lower extremity it divides that district from Pyapôn. On the left, at Yandoon, the Panlang creek leaves the Irrawaddy and flows into the Rangoon river. Formerly navigable by steamers of some size, of late years this creek has silted up and is now hardly practicable except by boats. Below Bassein, the Rangoon creek, so called because it is the route for steamers to Rangoon, re-unites the Bassein river with the main stream. Similarly, below Rangoon is the Bassein or Thakutpin creek, the beginning of the waterway to Bassein, flowing from the Rangoon river into the Irrawaddy.
Before the making of railways, the Irrawaddy was the great commercial route from the sea to the heart of Burma. On the unnumbered creeks and streams of the Delta, as well as on the main river, were to be seen many a stately Burmese boat, often adorned with rich carving, propelled by long oars or wafted by brown sails as wind and tide ordained, with high stern where the helmsman sat aloft. Here, too, might be seen smaller boats carrying the peasant with his farm produce to market, a score of brightly clad laughing men, maids, and matrons to a pagoda festival, a dozen monks on some religious mission; and racing boats, long and shallow, with crews of twenty or thirty shouting paddlers. Most of these picturesque craft are softly and silently vanishing away. Multitudes of launches now make the sylvan creeks hideous with steam-whistles, the grinding of screws, the churning of paddles. The sampan, an ugly exotic, penetrates even to remote villages; and the graceful Burmese boats are being ousted from the carrying traffic by squat barges and squalid lighters.
