Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/218

178 the richest province of all India, in agriculture and manufactures, was Bengal. Colonel James Mill, in his memoir already quoted above, points out that it has vast wealth and is indefensible toward the sea. "The immense commerce of Bengal," says Verelst in 1767, "might be considered as the central point to which all the riches of India were attracted. Its manufactures find their way to the remotest parts of Hindustan." It lay out of the regular track of invasion from Central Asia, and remote from the arena of civil wars which surged round the capital cities of the empire, Agra, Delhi, or Lahore. For ages it had been ruled by foreigners from the north; yet it was the province most exposed to maritime attack, and the most valuable in every respect to a seafaring and commercial race like the English. Its rivers lead like main arteries up to the heart of India. From Bengal northwestward, the land lies open, and, with few interruptions, is almost flat, expanding into the great central plain country that we now call the Northwest Provinces and Oudh, and further northward into the Panjab up to the foot of the Himalayan wall. Whoever holds that immense interior champaign country, which spreads from the Himalayas southeastward to the Bay of Bengal, occupies the central position that dominates all the rest of India; and it may accordingly be observed that all the great capital cities founded by successive conquering dynasties have been within this region.

Looking now at a map of India, we perceive that upper or continental (as distinguished from peninsular)