The river end backwater system of the district had much to do with the development of the country in the early days of foreign intervention, for those afforded the easiest and cheapest and almost the only means of communication in times when wheeled traffic and pack-bullock traffic were unknown. And accordingly it is found that the foreigners settled most thickly close to or on the rivers and selected sites for their factories so as to command as much as possible of these arteries of traffic.

The Portuguese (subsequently Dutch) factory at Cannanore, with its outwork on Mount Deli point, commanded the river navigation of the whole of the Kolattiri’s northern domain. The English factory at Tellicherry, with its outworks on Darmapattanam island, secured to the Honourable Company the largest share of the trade in the excellent pepper produced in the Randattara Achanmars’ territory, in the Kottayam Raja’s domain, and in that of the Iruvalinad Nambiars, tapped by the rivers converging at Dharmapattanam.

The French factory at the mouth of the Mahe river did the same for the Kadattanad Raja’s territory drained by that river. The Portuguese, the English, the French, and the Danes had factories in the Zamorin’s territory at Calicut, whither was conveyed by water the produce of the territories of the Zamorin, and of his more or less dependent chieftains, the Payurmala Nayars, the Kurumbranad Rajas, the Tamarasseri branch of the Kottayam family, the Parappanad Rajas, and the Puluvayi Nayars.

At Ponnani the water communication was defective because inconstant, so it was not much sought after as a factory site; whereas Chetwai, at the mouth of a widespread river and backwater system, was in much request by Portuguese and Dutch and subsequently by the English, and was often hotly contended for.

Cochin, where the Portuguese and subsequently the Dutch formed large settlements, owed its importance no less to its unsurpassed water communications with the interior as to its deep bar and landlocked harbour for the ships of small draught of water then in vogue. Again from Tangasseri the Dutch could command the largo expanse of navigable rivers there finding outlet to the sea. And finally the English at Anjengo settled on an inhospitable sandspit with the ocean on one side of it and a navigable river on the other, just because of the advantages which this river and neighbouring creeks afforded for bringing the produce of the country to their Company’s mart.

These were the great emporia of foreign trade, but at the head of the tidal portion of each river, and at favourable sites on its hanks, the pioneers of the great foreign companies had their trade-outposts and warehouses, and at all such places sprang up settlements of the classes (chiefly Muhammadans) who carried on the trade of the country. Such settlements still exist, but with the opening up of roads, canals and railway, and the centralizing influence of trade, their glory has largely passed away from them.

The following are the chief rivers, backwaters, canals, etc., in. the district, and the latitudes and longitudes are taken from the Indian Atlas Sheets Nos. 14, 61 and 62, and are those of the river mouths where they empty themselves into the ocean, or, in the case of rivers flowing eastward, those of the places where they finally leave the district: -

The Nilesvaram River.—N. Lat. 12° 4', E. Long. 75° 14’ This river, which is about forty-seven miles in length, lies for the most part in the district of South Canara. It drains, however, what is still a Malayalam country, and what was formerly the most northern portion of the kingdom of the Kolattiris. Country craft of small burthen can enter its mouth for a short distance.

The Elimala, or Mount Deli River N. Lat. 12° 2', E. Long. 75° 18’. The course of this stream is only about thirty miles in length. It rises in the ghat mountains and loses itself in a number of crooks to the east and north-east of the mount. One or more of these join the waters of the Nilesvaram river, and the chief one flows south and enters the sea in the angle of the bay formed immediately to the south of and under the very shadow of the mount itself.

These creeks being tidal, therefore convert the mount peninsula into an island. The sluggish water of these brackish crooks is extremely favourable to the crocodile tribe, which here at times attain prodigious dimensions, and with increasing weight they gain an appetite for the flesh of men and animals which makes it extremely dangerous for fishermen, and agriculturists too, to pursue their callings in such haunts. A crocodile fifteen feet in length is far more than a match for the strongest buffalo. The prodigious length of his ponderous jaws, armed with sharp-pointed interlocking teeth, give the reptile a hold of his victim which enables him to make full use of the enormous dead weight of his ungainly carcass as well as of his immense muscular power.

So much are these reptiles feared, that people in boats even are sometimes not exempt from danger, and dwellers by the water-side generally have guns loaded to take advantage of their enemies. Sometimes the whole country-side turns out to drag them from their lairs by nets of strong meshed rope.

The Sultan's Canal.—N. Lat, 12° 2', E. Long. 75° 18’. This is an artificial work (about two miles in length), undertaken and executed in 1766 by Ali Raja, the husband of the Bibi of Cannanore, when managing the Kolattiri domains for Haidar Ali. It connects the Mount Deli river with the backwater formed at the mouth of the Taliparamba and Valarpattanam rivers, and thus gives uninterrupted water communication at all seasons. Formerly boats going to or from the north had to go out to sea at this point.

The Taliparamba River.—N. Lat. 11° 57', E. Long. 75° 22'. The main branch of this river is navigable at all seasons for boats as far as the lower slopes of the ghat mountains. After passing Taliparamba the main branch is joined by one from the cast, and the two together spread out into an extensive sheet of water, the haunt in certain seasons of large flocks of aquatic birds. Bending slightly to the north and passing under the guns of an old ruined fort of the Kolattiris, - the united streams then suddenly turn at Palangadi (ancient bazaar) due south and run in a course parallel to the sea till they meet the stronger current of the Valarpattanam river, united to which they force for themselves a passage to the sea through the sand shoals thrown up by the littoral currents. A large tract of fertile garden land has been formed by the continuous action of the littoral currents damming up the mouth of this river. Its length from source to mouth is about fifty-one miles.

The Valarpattanam River.—N. Lat. 110 57', E. Long. 75° 22’. Though the length of this river is less than that of several others in Malabar proper, it perhaps discharges more water into the sea than any of them. It has three large branches, one of which joins the tidal part of the main stream and is itself navigable for boats almost to the foot of the ghat mountains. Near the head of the navigable portion of this branch lies one of those pioneer settlements of trading foreigners (Muhammadans) already alluded to, and it is in this out-of-the-way place that, local tradition says, was founded one of the nine original Muhammadan mosques.

The tradition is, that this place, the “Surrukundapuram” of the Indian Atlas, was in former days the chief emporium of trade with the fertile lands of Coorg and the sandal forests of Mysore, and that this is the place to which Ibn Batuta travelled from Hili (Elimala), and about the exact locality of which there has been some speculation. It is just about one day's journey, by water all the way, from Mount Deli.

On the main branch of the river the head of the navigable portion is likewise marked by a pioneer settlement of foreign traders (Muhammadans) located in the village of Irukur (Erroocur of the Atlas). The trade route to Mysore and Coorg in more recent times lay through this village, and it was through this village that one of the columns of the force despatched against Coorg in I834 laid its route.

Further up stream, at Irritti, and just below the junction of its other two main branches, the existing trade route via the Perambadi ghat crosses the river by a lofty bridge of masonry piers and abutments with a superstructure of wood about to be replaced by iron lattice girders. Beyond this bridge the sources of the river lie in the ghat mountains and in primeval forest, much of which is still inhabited only by wild beasts. The lengths of these two main branches above Irritti bridge are respectively about thirty-two and twenty-eight miles, and the whole length of the stream may be taken to be about seventy-four miles.

At the village of Valarpattanam near its mouth there is a well-preserved fort on a lofty cliff on the south bank of the river completely dominating the stream, and further west on an island, in the backwater was yet another fort called Madakkara. The former belonged to the Kolattiri, and was evidently planned for him by European engineers; the latter was one of the outworks built by the Honourable Company’s factors at the English settlement of Tellicherry to protect the Company’s trade on those rivers. Country craft of considerable size enter the river and lie off the village of Valarpattanam.

The Anjarakandi River.—N. Lat. 11° 47', E. Long. 75° 32'. This river rises in the heavy forest land on the western face of the Wynad ghat slopes, and after a course of about forty miles divides into two branches and thus forms the island of Darmapattanam at its junction with the sea. It is navigable for boats at all seasons to a place called Venkat some distance above Anjarakandi. At Venkat the Honourable English Company had a trading outpost in the very heart of the finest pepper-producing country in Malabar.

And at Anjarakandi the Honourable Company started an experimental garden for the growth of various exotics. The command of the traffic on this river was considered so important that Darmapattanam island at its mouth, acquired by the Honourable Company in 1734-35, was heavily fortified and garrisoned from the Tellicherry factory, and it was even proposed to give up the Tellicherry factory altogether and to build a new one on Darmapattanam island.

The Tellicherry River.—N. Lat. 11° 43’ E. Long. 75° 33'. This is an insignificant stream navigable for boats to a distance of only about three or three and a half miles, and in length altogether its course is about fourteen miles. Small country craft do, however, enter its mouth and lie above the bridge which spans it. It was of importance as affording protection to the English factory at Tellicherry on the northern and eastern landward sides, and the natural protection it afforded was further strengthened by small fortified outworks at various points of vantage. It was frequently called the Kodoli river from the fort of that name, commanding the bay at its month. At a short distance above Tellicherry it still forms the boundary of the French aldee, of Pandakal, a detached outlying portion of the French settlement at Mahe.

The Mahe River. - N. bat. 11° 43', E. Long. 75° 36'. This stream rises in the heavy forests of the Wynad ghats, and after a course of about thirty-four miles falls into the sea at the French settlement of Mahe, of the main portion of which it forms the northern and eastern boundary for a distance of about two miles. It is navigable for country craft of a small size for a distance of about half a mile and for boats as far as Parakadavu some twelve miles farther up stream.

The Kotta River.—N. Lat. 11° 34', E. Long. 75° 39'. It is so named from a fort (kotta) commanding the entrance to the sea. It was notorious in former days as a haunt of pirates, one of whom Kottakkal Kunyali Marakkar, made his name famous. It drains a heavy mass of virgin forest on the western slopes of the Wynad ghats, and, the rainfall being excessively heavy in those parts, the river discharges for its length, only some forty-six miles, more than the usual quantity of water for rivers of its size. It is navigable at all seasons for boats as far as Kuttiyadi, which lies closely adjacent to the chain of ghats, and from this point a pack-bullock road runs up the mountains into North Wynad. The water communication on this river is linked on the one hand on the north by —

the Vadakkara Canal. N. Lat 110 36', E Long. 750 38' - partly natural and partly artificial, to the thriving trading town of Vadakkara, and on the south by another canal made in 1843 and called —

the Payoli Canal—N. 110, 31', E Long. 750 43' length about one mile, to the extensive natural backwater communication of—

the Agalapula, which means lit orally broad river. This broad river or backwater receives no stream of any importance, indeed nearly all the drainage from the ghats at this point is intercepted by the main stream and tributaries of the Kotta river, so that for a distance of about sixteen miles (N. Lat 110 31', E Long. 75° 43', to N. Lat. 11° 22', E. Long. 750' 48') this backwater runs in a course parallel to the sea until it meets the Ellattur river close to the mouth of that stream.

The importance of this natural water communication can hardly be overrated. It would seem as if the Kotta river had at one time found its way to the sea by this outlet instead of by the channel now in use, and indeed even now the water-level in the Kotta river sometimes rises so high as to threaten to breach through the narrow isthmus separating it from the Agalapula, the water-level of which rises of course much less rapidly in floods. This difference of level in floods necessitates the maintenance, of a water-lock at the entrance to the Payoli canal from the Kotta river.

The Ellatlur River.- N. Lat, 11° 22', E Long. 75° 48'—is in length about thirty-two miles, but it is a shallow stream, and, except near its mouth, is not suited for boat traffic. It is connected with the Kallai river and backwaters and with the Beypore river beyond by —

the Conolly Canal, which, taking advantage of the natural facilities already existing, loops together the drainage areas of the three streams above mentioned. The canal was constructed under the orders of Mr. Conolly, the Collector of Malabar, and was completed in the year 1848. It consists of a cut about three miles in length through several low ridges intervening between the Ellattur river and the Kallai river ; the deepest cutting is about, thirty feet through laterite rock, and the width which is irregular, is in the narrowest portions about twelve feet. The depth of water in the cutting at low tide is only a few inches. Imperfect as it is, the facilities it affords to traffic are largely utilised, and it is likely to be ere long much improved in the carrying out of an extensive scheme proposed so long ago as in 1822 by Special Commissioner Mr. Graeme for affording inland water communication from Travancore northwards.

The Kallai river. N. Lat. 110 14', E. Long. 75° 51'. The stream, which, in the monsoon months only, forces a way for itself into the sea through the sand shoals thrown up by the littoral currents on the beach at Calicut, is a very insignificant one, and attains a length of about fourteen miles only. Connected with it, however, are several pretty extensive back-waters, and these again are looped on to the Beypore river by a narrow creek.

The Beypore river. N. Lat. 110 9’, E. Long. 75° 52'-—drains a very extensive tract of the Wynad ghats and Nilgiri mountains. This is the only stream in Malabar which brings any considerable portion of its waters from above the crest of the ghat mountain ridge. Its two main branches rise respectively one in the Kunda mountains on the Nilgiri plateau and the other on the lower ranges of south-east Wynad. The one, called the Gold river, passes over the ridge of ghats in a long succession of rooky cataracts lying a short distance south of the Karkur pass.

The other, called the Chola river, leaps down from the crest of the Wynad bills in a magnificent cataract close to a footpath known as the Choladi pass. The two streams, after receiving many large feeders, unite in the midst of the Nilambur Government teak plantations, and then flow on, receiving several important feeders from north and south, to their outlet into the sea at Beypore, the old terminus of the Madras Railway south-west line, a total distance in the ease of the main branch of about ninety-six miles.

This river discharges a very large volume of water in the monsoon seasons, and the scour on the bar is thus sufficient to maintain a depth of about six feet at low tide which enables country craft to enter and lie about half a mile up-stream opposite the custom house and railway terminus. Even in the height of the dry season also boats of light draught can ascend the stream as far as Mambat under the very shadow of the lofty Camel Hump range. There as usual (and also at Arikod) are to be found colonies of Muhammadan traders settled for ages. The sands of this, and indeed of all the streams descending from the ghat mountains in Malabar, have from the earliest times been known to be auriferous, and even now some of the lower classes of the population try to eke out a precarious livelihood by washing the sands after each annual flood.

The Kadalundi river--N. Lat. 11° 8', E. Long. 75° 53'—is united to the Beypore river by a creek, and thus is formed the island of Chaliyam, on which was placed the old terminus of the Madras Railway south-west line.

The Kadalundi river comes from the western slopes of the Nilgiri mountains and of the Silent Valley range, and its main branch is seventy-five miles in length. The country through which it passes is on a higher level than the valley of the Beypore river, and hence the boat traffic on this stream is very limited except during the annual flood season when boats can get up-stream as far as Malappuram and even farther, but in the dry season boat traffic is confined to a few miles near the mouth of the river.

An unsuccessful attempt, continued down to 1857, was made by several Collectors to connect by a canal the Kadalundi river with the hack-waters and creeks of the Ponnani river. A outting was made, and for a day or two in the height of the monsoon, when the country is flooded, boats can pass with some difficulty from the one river to the other, but at other seasons this is impracticable. A great natural obstacle to the successful construction of this canal was that at a short depth below the surface, a bed of unctuous clay or mud was found, which oozing into the canal filled it up sufficiently to prevent the passage of boats. This liquid mud seems to be of the same character with that which, forced upwards from the bottom of the sea by submarine volcanic action or by subterraneous pressure of water from the large inland back-waters, forms the mud banks or mud bays in which at one or two places on the coast (notably at Narakal and Alleppey) ships can ride in safety and load and discharge cargo throughout the monsoon season. The same difficulty was experienced at Calicut in making a short canal from the Kallai river to the main bazaar.

The Ponnani river.—N. Lai. 10° 48', E. Long. 75° 59'. This is the longest of the rivers which discharge into the Arabian Ocean in Malabar proper. The main stream is about one hundred and fifty-six miles long, and the lengths of its three chief tributaries before they join the main stream are respectively about sixty, fifty and forty-six miles. But the volume of water discharged from, the large area drained by this river and its tributaries is probably not so great and is certainly not so constant as that discharged either by the Valarpattanam river or by the Beypore river.

The reason of this is that the main stream comes from the arid plains of Coimbatore, and its drainage area in the mountains under the influence of the south-west monsoon is comparatively small. This tract, too, lies further inland than the mountain ranges to the north of them. The south-west line of the Madras Railway strikes the course of this river at the Palghat gap and runs along close to the stream till within a mile or two of the coast.

The bed of the stream in the lower roaches is generally sandy, and the water is shallow, but in the rains loaded boats do ascend the stream for considerable distances There is never, however, except during the rains, a current at its mouth sufficiently strong to maintain a deep and wide channel through the sand drifts carried by the littoral currents. The bar is therefore always considerably impeded by shoals, and at times when the first monsoon floods come down the river the water is backed up and floods the surrounding country till the rush of water has cleared away these sand shoals.

Dangerous deep currents are thus formed, and the river-side portion of Ponnani town which stands at its mouth is always in more or less danger from erosion, and in fact the town is only preserved by groynes, for the proper maintenance of which a special voluntary cess is paid by the mercantile community. This river near its mouth is connected on the north by a navigable crook with the railway system at Tirur railway station, and on the south by—

the Ponnani canal with the back-waters of Velliyankod, which again communicate with those further south, and boat traffic is by those means possible from the railway at Tirur down to Trivandrum, the capital of the Travancore State, a distance of over two hundred miles. But the water communication is only practicable at all seasons at present for small boats, and a scheme is under consideration for improving it.

Among the most urgent requirements is the widening and deepening of the cut about two miles in length — connecting the Ponnani river with the Velliyankod back-water. The cut is at present only about fifteen foot, wide, and the water in it is only a few inches deep at low tide.

The Velliyankod back-water.-- N. Lat. 10° 44', E. Long. 76° 0’. No stream of any importance joins this system of lagoons and back-waters, and the opening to the sea is maintained by the force with which the tide ebbs and flows. It is united with —

the Chamkkad back-water by creeks which, together with the latter, extend from N. Lat. 10° 44' to 10° 32' and from E. Long. 76° l' to 76° 6', a distance in all of about fifteen miles. In all this distance no stream of any size flows into or out of the back-water ; indeed two ridges running parallel to the coast line seem to shut off drainage both from east and west. This hollow is filled with fresh-water in the rains, and two rude embankments of wattle and mud are made at the end of the rains to keep in the fresh and to prevent the influx of salt-wafer, which would otherwise destroy the heavy rice-crops raised within the enclosure.

The passage of boats is maintained by sliding them with extra help over the obstacles on the unctuous mud of which the embankments are formed. At its southern extremity the back-water joins

the Chewai river.—N. Lat. 10° 31', E. Long. 76° 6'. The mouth of this river and about six miles of its course lie entirely in British territory, and for about two miles more it forms the boundary between British territory and the Native State of Cochin. At the end of this eight miles the river widens out into a lake, partly natural and partly artificial.

The Trichur or Ennamakkal lake—N. Lat. 10° 25' to 10° 35', E. Long. 76° 10' to 76° 16'—as it is called, is of considerable size, about twenty-vivo square miles, and of great value, and deserves notice, if only for the singular struggle of human industry against the forces of nature to which the cultivation of its bed demands. From the subsidence of the floods of one year to the commencement of the following rains the space of time is barely sufficient for the garnering of a crop.

At the close of the rains the water in the lake, which is protected from tidal influences by a masonry dam at Ennamakkal, is drained off by ceaseless labour day and night with Persian wools aided not unfrequently now-a-days by patent pumps driven by portable steam-engines, whose fires glow weirdly across the waste of waters on dark nights while the incessant throb and rattle of the engines and machinery strive hard to dispel any illusions. Every foot of ground that can be thus reclaimed is protected by fences of wattle and mud and is planted up with well-grown rice seedlings.

Spaces are left between the fields, and into these channels the water drawn from the fields is poured, so that boats have to be employed for visiting the different fields, the dry beds of which lie some three or four feel below the level of the water in the canals. In the dry weather the lake presents a magnificent level green expanse of the most luxuriant growing rice, the pleasant effect of which to the eye is heightened by contrast with the snowy plumage of the innumerable cranes and other aquatic birds which here revel in a continual feast.

With the early thunder harbingers of the south west monsoon in April re-commences the struggle with the slowly but steadily rising flood. Numberless Persian wheels bristle in their bamboo frameworks for the contest with the threatening floods, and as the season advances thousands of the population, many of them good caste Nayar women, are perched high above the scene on those machines continuing the day and night struggle with the rising floods for the preservation of their ripening crops. The bulwarks of the fields are frequently broached and the unmatured crop drowned.

Often a large area has to be reaped by simply heading the stalks from boats ; but, as a rule, an enormously rich crop rewards this remarkable industry. A small portion only of this lake lies in British territory. The major portion belongs to the Cochin State, and, as already observed, a masonry dam at Ennamakkal is necessary to maintain the level of the fresh-water in the lake and to keep out the salt-water.

The original dam seems to have been formed some time during the eighteenth century by (it is said) the united efforts of the Zamorin and Cochin Rajas. They erected an embankment of hewn stone above two hundred feet long across the backwater at Ennamakkal.

In 1802 Assistant Collector Mr. Drummond, under an erroneous expectation of benefiting the neighbouring lands, caused the dam to be partially destroyed ; but the consequence was that a largo area of land fell out of cultivation owing to the influx of salt-water. Various attempts were made, especially in 1823 and 1842, to reconstruct the dam on the original plan. A project for a now dam lower down the river at Chetwai was proposed, and between 1855 and 1858 preparations for constructing this work were undertaken. The idea was abandoned, however, after Rs. 35,000 had been spent on it, and since then the original dam has been annually patched up at the joint cost to the British and Cochin Governments.

The last stream to find its way into the sea, in British territory is-

The Cochin river- N. Lat. 90 38’ E. Long. 760 18’ It can hardly be called a river, for it is rather the tidal opening, of an immense system of back-waters in which numerous large rivers from the ghat mountains lose themselves. These back-waters extend far away north into Cochin territory and far away south into Travancore and afford an admirable means of conveying the produce of this immense tract to its market at Cochin. The rush of water across the bar is so great as to maintain a depth on it of about, twelve feet of water, which enables ships of a considerable size to come into harbour and load in smooth water. The depth is, however, insufficient for the large trading steamers employed in the coast traffic, and many of the sailing ships even which convey the produce to foreign countries are unable to cross the bar when loaded.

These sometimes take in a portion of their cargo inside, and then go outside to the roadstead to complete their lading. Many proposals have from time to time been mooted for improving the Cochin river harbour, and a steam dredge was sent out from England to deepen the bar. It was found to be unsuited for working in the rough water which always more or less prevails on the bar, and it was also found that the depth of water in the channel inside the bar was suited for the merchant steamers of the present day.

A proposal to make a close harbour has also been set aside on the ground of expense. The trade of Cochin, considerable as it is, could not afford to pay the interest, on the largo sum required for this purpose.

Besides the above rivers which flow into the Arabian sea in Malabar, there are three of the largo tributaries of the Kaveri river which deserve mention as having their sources in Malabar. Those are —

The Kabbani River- N. Lat. 110 52’ E. Long. 76° 16’ - which has its sources in Wynad, and which at times, owing to excessive rainfall on the ghat mountains, rolls down a very heavy flood to its parent stream. It and its tributaries drain, nearly the whole of North and South Wynad, but their beds are too rocky and too shadow to permit of any traffic on them beyond the floating of timber.

The Rampur River—N. Lat. 11° 12', E. Long. 76° 48'—resembles the Kabbani, into which it eventually flows after draining a large portion of South-East Wynad.

The Bavani River - N. Lat. 11° 12', E. Long. 76° 48'—rises in the Kunda mountains on the Nilgiri plateau, and, after following a circuitous course through the Attapadi Valley, in which it barely escapes tumbling over the ghats to the westward, it returns again to the shadow of the Nilgiri mountains just, before leaving Malabar. It is joined in the valley by one large and several small feeders. The former is called the Siruwani or small Bavani and rises on the crest of the lofty forest-clad mountains on the northern edge of the Palghat gap.

Acquiring a considerable volume in a sort of amphitheatre of mountains on the very crest of the ghats it pours itself in a magnificent cataract, said to be two thousand foot high, over a precipitous ledge of rock which horns in the Attapadi Valley on the south.

At the top of this lodge of rook is a deep pool in the bed of the stream called Muttukulam, which is regarded with superstitious awe by the people, and about which many wonderful stories are told. By those who have never been to see it, it is said to be fathomless, and the people declare that extraordinary and tremendous noises do at times issue from it, and full cracking among the mountains.