Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/578

Rh      ENGAL (or, as it is often more precisely designated, &quot; Lower Bengal &quot;), the largest and most populous of the twelve local governments of British India, comprising the lower valleys and deltas of the Ganges and Brahmaputra, lies between 19 18 and 28 15 N. lat., and between 82 and 97 E. long. Excluding Assam, which was erected into a separate administration in February 1874, Bengal now in cludes the four great provinces of Bengal Proper, Behar, Orissa, and Chhotd or Chutid Ndgpur ; and forms a Lieu tenant-Governorship with an area of 203,473 square miles, and a population of 64,444,379 souls. Including Assam, which, until the spring of 1874, was a part of Bengal, the area was 248,231 square miles, and the population 66,856,859. This great lieutenant-governorship, excluding Assam, contains one-third of the total population of British India, and yields a revenue of 17,687,072, or over one- third of the aggregate revenues of the Indian empire. It is bounded on the N. by Assam, Bhutdn, and Nepdl ; on the S. by Burmah, the Bay of Bengal, and Madras ; on the W. by an imaginary line running between it and the adjoining lieutenant-governorship of the North-AVestern Provinces, and by the plateau of the Central Provinces ; and on the E. by the unexplored mountainous region which separates it from China and Northern Burmah. The terri tory, thus hemmed in, except at its north-western angle, by the unchangeable land-marks of nature, consists chiefly of two broad river valleys. By the western one, the Ganges brings down the wealth and the accumulated waters of Northern India. The eastern valley forms the route by which the Brahmaputra, after draining the Thibetan pla teau far to the north of the Himalayas, and skirting round their passes not far from the Yangtse-Kiang and the great river of Cambodia, ends its boisterous journey of 1800 miles. These valleys, although for the most part luxuriant alluvial plains, are diversified by spurs and peaks thrown out from the great mountain systems which wall them in on the north-east and south-west. They teem with every product of nature, from the fierce beasts and irrepressible vegetation of the tropics, to the stunted barley which the hill-man rears, and the tiny furred animal which he hunts within sight of the unmelting snows. Tea, indigo, turmeric, lac, waving white fields of the opium-poppy, wheat and innumerable grains and pulses, pepper, ginger, betel-nut, quinine and many costly spices and drugs, oil-seeds of sorts, cotton, the silk mulberry, inexhaustible crops of jute and other fibres ; timber, from the feathery bamboo and coronetted palm to the iron-hearted sal tree in short, every vegetable product which feeds and clothes a people, and enables it to trade with foreign nations, abounds. Nor is the country destitute of mineral wealth. The districts near the sea consist entirely of alluvial formations ; and, indeed, it is stated that no substance so coarse as gravel occurs throughout the Delta, or in the heart of the pro vinces within 400 miles of the river mouths. But amid the hilly spurs and undulations on either side, coal, and iron and copper ores, hold out a new future to Bengal, as capital increases under the influence of a stable government, and our knowledge of the country becomes more exact. The coal-fields on the west have for exactly a century been worked by English enterprise; in 1868 they yielded 564,933 tons, and more in the two following years. In the east, the coal measures of Assam, which province was separated from Bengal in 1874, still await the opening out of the country and improved facilities of transport. The climate varies from the snowy regions of the Himalayas to the tropical vapour-bath of the Delta and the burning winds of Behar. The ordinary range of the thermometer on the plains is from about 52 Fahr. in the coldest month to 103 in the shade in summer. Anything below 60 is considered very cold; and by care in the hot weather the temperature of well-built houses rarely exceeds 95. The rainfall also varies greatly; from 500 to 600 inches per annum at Chard Piinji (Cherra Poonjee) on the range between Silhet and Assam, to an average of about 37 inches in Behar, and about 65 inches on the Delta.

—But the secret of Bengal is its rivers. These untaxed highways bring down, almost by the motive power of their own current, the crops of Northern India to the sea-board, an annual harvest of wealth to the trading classes, for which the population of the Lower Provinces neither toil nor spin. Lower Bengal, indeed, exhibits the two typical stages in the life of a great river. In the nor thern districts the rivers, like our English ones, run along the valleys, receive the drainage from the country on either side, absorb broad tributaries, and rush forward with an ever increasing volume. But near the centre of the pro vinces the rivers enter upon a new stage of their career. Their main channels bifurcate, and each new stream so created throws off its own set of distributaries to right and left. The country which they thus enclose and intersect forms the Delta of Bengal^ Originally conquered by tho fluvial deposits from the sea, it now stretches out as a vast dead level, in which the rivers find their velocity checked, and their current no longer able to carry along the silt which they have brought down from Northern India. The streams, accordingly, deposit their alluvial burden in their channels and upon their banks, so that by degrees their beds rise above the level of the surrounding country. In this way the rivers in the Delta slowly build themselves up into canals, which every autumn break through or over flow their margins, and leave their silt upon the adjacent flats. Thousands of square miles in Lower Bengal annually receive a top-dressing of virgin soil, brought free of expense a quarter of a year s journey from the Himalayas, a system of natural manuring which renders elaborate til lage a mere waste of laboiir, and which defies the utmost power of over-cropping to exhaust its fertility. As the rivers creep further down the Delta, they become more and more sluggish, and their bifurcations and interlacings more complicated. The last scene of all is a vast amphibious wilderness of swamp and forest, amid whose solitudes their network of channels insensibly merges into the sea. Here the perennial struggle between earth and ocean goes on, and all the ancient secrets of land-making stand disclosed. The rivers, finally checked by the dead weight of the sea, deposit their remaining silt, which emerges as banks or blunted promontories, or, after a year s battling with the tide, adds a few feet or, it may be, a few inches to the fore shore. The Ganges, which enters on the western frontier, and runs diagonally across Bengal, gives to the country its peculiar character and aspect. About 200 miles from its mouth it spreads out into numerous branches, forming a large delta, composed, where it borders on the sea, of a labyrinth of creeks and rivers, running through the dense forests of the Sundarbans, and exhibiting during the annual inundation the appearance of an immense sea. At this time the rice fields to the extent of many hundreds of square miles are submerged. The scene presents to a European eye a panorama of singular novelty and interest; rice fields covered with water to a great depth ; the 