Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/758

734 734 INDIA [PHYSICAL Western famous passes from the level coast-strip on the western Ghats. gide The Bor-Ghat, for example, ascends a tremendous ravine about 40 miles south-east of Bombay city, to a height of 1798 feet. In ancient times this pass was regarded as the key of the Peccan, and could be held by a small band against any army attempting to penetrate from the coast. A celebrated military road was constructed by the British up the Bor-Ghat, and practically gave the command of the interior to the then rising port of Bombay. A railway line has now been carried up the pass, twisting round the shoulders of mountains, tunnelling through intervening crags, and clinging by a narrow ledge to the face of the precipices. At one point the zigzag is so sharp as to render a circuitous turn impossible, and the trains have to stop and reverse their direction on a levelled terrace. The Thall Ghat, to the north of Bombay, has in like manner been scaled both by road and railway. Another cele brated pass, farther down the coast, connects the military centre of Belgaum with the little port of Vingurla. These &quot;landing-stairs &quot; from the sea to the interior present scenes of rugged grandeur. The trap rocks stand out, after ages of denudation, like circular fortresses flanked by round towers, from the mass of hills behind, natural fastnesses, which in the Marhatta times were rendered impregnable to Oriental warfare. To the south of Bombay, the passes climb up from the sea through thick forests, the haunt of the tiger and the stately bison. Still farther down the coast, the western mountain wall dips down into the Palghat valley, a remarkable gap, 25 miles broad, and leading by an easy route, only 1500 feet above the sea at its highest point, from the sea-board to the interior. A railway now extends by this passage from Beypur across the peninsula to Madras. Eastern On the eastern side of India, the Ghats form a series of Ghdts. spurs and buttresses for the elevated inner plateau, rather than a continuous mountain wall. They are traversed by a number of broad and easy passages from the Madras coast. Through these openings the rainfall of the southern half of the inner plateau reaches the sea. The drainage from the northern or Vindhyan erlge of the three-sided table-land falls into the Ganges. The Narbada (Nerbudda) and Tapti carry the rainfall of the southern slopes of the Vindhyas and of the Satpura hills, in almost parallel lines, into the Gulf of Cambay. But from Surat, in 21 9 lat., to Cape Comorin, in 8 4 lat., no large river succeeds in reaching the western coast from the interior table-land. The Western Ghats form, in fact, a lofty unbroken barrier between the waters of the central plateau and the Indian Ocean. The drainage has therefore to make its way across India to the eastwards, now turning sharply round project ing ranges, now tumbling down ravines, or rushing along the valleys, until the rain which the Bombay sea-breeze has dropped upon the Western Ghats finally falls into the Rivers of Bay of Bengal. In this way the three great rivers of the Southern Madras Presidency, viz., the Godavari, the Krishna, and land 6 &quot; ^ e K^veri (Cauvery), rise in the mountains overhanging the western coast, and traverse the whole breadth of the central table-land before they reach the sea on the eastern shores of India. The physical geography and the political destiny of the two sides of the Indian peninsula have been determined by the characteristics of the mountain ranges on either coast. On the east, the country is comparatively open, and was everywhere accessible to the spread of civilization. On the east, therefore, the ancient dynasties of southern India fixed their capitals. Along the west, only a narrow strip of lowland intervenes between the barrier range and the seaboard. The inhabitants of those tracts remained apart from the civilization of the eastern coast. To this day one of their ruling races, the Nairs, retain land-tenures and social customs, such as polyandry, which mark a much ruder stage of human advancement than Hinduism, and in other parts of India only linger among isolated hill tribes. On the other hand, the people of the western coast enjoy a bountiful rainfall, unknown in the inner plateau and the east. The monsoon dashes its rain-laden Rainf; clouds against the Western Ghats, and pours from 250 to ofsou 100 inches of rain upon their maritime slopes from Khan-f ru, ta desh down to Malabar. By the time that the monsoon has crossed the Western Ghats, it has dropped the greater part of its aqueous burden, and central districts, such as Bangalore, obtain only about 35 inches. The eastern coast also receives a monsoon of its own ; but, except in the neighbourhood of the sea, the rainfall throughout the Madras presidency is scanty, seldom exceeding 40 inches in the year. The deltas of the three great rivers along the Madras coast form, of course, tracts of inexhaustible fertility ; and much is done by irrigation on the thirsty inland plateau to husband and utilize both the local rainfall and the accumulated waters which the rivers bring down, In the valleys, and upon the&quot; elevated plains of the central Crop? plateau, tillage has driven back the jungle to the hilly recesses, and fields of rice and many kinds of smaller grain or millets, tobacco, cotton, sugar-cane, and pulses spread over the open country. The black soil of the Deccan is proverbial for its fer tility ; and the level strip between the Western Ghats and the sea rivals even Lower Bengal in its fruit-bearing palms, rice harvests, and rich succession of crops. The deltas on the eastern side have from time immemorial been celebrated as rice-bearing tracts. The interior of the table-land, as may be inferred from the scanty rainfall, is liable to drought. The people contend against the calamities of nature by varied systems of irrigation, drawing their water-supply in some districts from wells, in others from tanks and reservoirs, or from large artificial lakes formed by dam ming up the ends of river valleys. They thus store the rain brought during a few months by the monsoon, and husband it for use throughout the whole year. The food of the common people consists chiefly of small grains, such as /oar, bdjra, and rdgi. The great export is cotton, with wheat from the northern districts of Bombay. The pepper trade with Malabar dates far beyond the age of Sindbad the Sailor, and probably reaches back to Roman times. Cardamoms, spices of various sorts, dyes, and many medicinal drags are also grown. It is on the three-sided table-land, and among the hilly spurs Minci which project from it, that the mineral wealth of India lies hid. Coal-mining now forms a great industry on the north-eastern side of the table-land, in Bengal, and also in the Central Provinces. The commercial aspects of this and similar undertakings will be dealt with in a later section of the present article. Beds of iron- ore and limestone have been worked in several places, and hold out a possibility of a new era of enterprise to India in the future. Many districts are rich in building stone, marbles and the easily worked laterite. Copper and other metals exist in small quantities. Gold dust has from very ancient times been washed out of the river-beds, and gold-mining is being attempted on scientific prin ciples in Madras and Mysore. Of the three regions of India, now briefly surveyed, the first, or the Himalayas, lies for the most part beyond the British frontier, but a knowledge of it supplies the key to the ethnology and history of India. The second region, or the great river plains in the north, formed the theatre of the ancient race-movements which shaped the civilization and the political destinies of the whole Indian peninsula. The third region, or the triangular table-land in the south, has a character quite distinct from either of the other two divisions, and a population which is now working out a separate development of its own. Broadly speaking, the Himalayas are peopled by Turanian tribes ; the great river plains of Hindustan are still the home of the Aryan race ; the triangular table-land has formed an arena for a long struggle between that gifted race from the north and what is known as the Dravidian stock in the south. To this vast empire the English have added British Britis Burniah, consisting of the lower valley of the Irawadi Burni; (Irrawaddy) with its delta, and a long flat strip stretching down the eastern side of the Bay of Bengal. Between the