Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/217

Rh since it was from Bengal, not from Madras or Bombay, that the English power first struck inland into the heart of the country and discovered the right road to supremacy in India. To advance into Bengal was to penetrate India by its soft and unprotected side. From Cape Comorin northward along the east coast there is not a single harbour for large ships; nor are the river estuaries accessible to them.

NATIVE BOAT OF BENGAL.

But at the head of the Bay of Bengal we come upon a low-lying deltaic region, pierced by navigable channels which discharge through several mouths the waters of great rivers issuing from the interior. Some of these are merely huge drains of the water-logged soil; others are fed by the Himalayan snows. On this section, and upon no other of the Indian seaboard, the rivers are wide waterways offering fair harbourage and the means of penetrating many miles inland; while around and beyond stretches the rich alluvial plain of Bengal, inhabited by a very industrious and unwarlike people, who produce much and can live on very little.

All authorities agree that in the eighteenth century