the Transgangetic Peninsula (or Further India) which are contiguous to India, and the Andaman and Nikobar Islands, belong to India politically, but not geographically. The rich and important Island of Ceylon, on the other hand, belongs to India geographically, but not politically; it is an English Crown Colony, and is administered by a Governor under the Colonial Office.

§ 2. Hindustan and the Deccan.-India Proper, then, as above defined, consists of the Indian Peninsula, which is the central peninsula of Southern Asia, with the adjacent part of the Asiatic continent as far north as the Himálaya Mountains.

In the northern part of the peninsula, and just south of the Tropic of Cancer, a chain of highlands runs across nearly from sea to sea. It is the most important waterparting in the country; the waters to the north draining chiefly into the Narbadá and the Ganges, those to the south into the Tapti, the Mahánadi, and some smaller streanis. Its general direction is from west by south to east by north. In the west, between the basins of the Narbadá and the Tapti, it is called the Sátpurá range; on the eastern side it becomes merged in the plateau of Chutia Nágpur and Hazáribagh in Bengal. It will be seen hereafter that the western portion of this chain is also the boundary between two important sections of the Indian people, between the Hindi-speaking and the Maráthi-speaking races. For all these reasons, it is convenient to regard this chain of highlands as the division between Northern and Southern India, which are often called Hindustán and the Deccan respectively.

NOTE. It should, however, be remembered that the terms 'Hindustan' and 'the Deccan,' as commonly used, are ambiguous. Hindustan is sometimes used by European geographers to indicate the whole of India; whilst on the other hand the meaning of the term in India is sometimes restricted to those regions in the upper Gangetic valley which are occupied by Hindi-speaking races. When opposed to 'the Deccan,' it means broadly Northern India,' as opposed to 'Southern India'; but the boundary is sometimes placed at the Narbadá river, sometimes as we have placed it above, and sometimes at the Vindhya

range (which is a minor escarpment bounding the Narbadá valley on the north). So, too, 'the Deccan' is sometimes restricted in its meaning to the territory forming the northern portion of the great plateau of Southern India, and sometimes applied specially to the Feudatory State ruled by the Nizám of Haidarabad, nearly coincident with that territory. In ancient Indian writers, the boundary between Hindustan and the Deccan is uniformly placed at the Vindhya range; but Professor H. H. Wilson was of opinion that the term Vindhya was anciently applied to the Satpurá range and its continuations, not to the modern Vindhya north of the Narbadá.

§ 3. Physical Divisions of Northern India.-Northern India consists mainly of a vast plain, which includes (1) the basin of the Indus, and the Thar or Great Indian Desert on the west; (2) the basin of the Ganges and its tributaries in the centre and east; and (3) two valleys in the far east, which form the basin of the Brahmaputra and its affluents. This plain is flanked on the north and west by mountain-zones, called respectively the Himálaya and the Sulemán ranges.

On the south of some portions of the western and central divisions of this plain is the great plateau of Malwa and Bághalkhand, which is separated from the central mountain-axis (the Sátpurá and other ranges) by the valley of the Narbadá.

§ 4. The Himálaya and Sulemán Mountain-Zones.These ranges, the northern and western boundaries of Northern India, meet nearly at right angles in the upper corner of the Punjab. Both are, however, the interrupted serrated barriers of tablelands which form part of the great east-and-west mountain-system of Europe and Asia; and geologically they are of the same structure, and comparatively of recent (middle and later tertiary) formation,

From the gorge of the Indus in east longitude 72° to that of the Dihong (chief affluent of the Brahmaputra) in east longitude 95° 30', a distance of 1,400 miles, the Himálaya is an unbroken watershed of an average height of 19,000 feet. Its northern slopes are drained by the upper streams of these two rivers, which rise within a

hundred miles of each other, near the great peak of Kailás (22,000 feet), and flow north-west and south-east respectively until they succeed in breaking through the mountain-zone, and find their way, the Indus to the Arabian Sea near Karáchi, the Dihong or Brahmaputra to the bay of Bengal, in the great Gangetic Delta. The southern slopes of the Himálaya are drained by the Indus and its tributaries (one of which, the Sutlej, rises far within the mountain-zone) in the west, by the Ganges and its system in the centre, and by the Brahmaputra in the east. Its highest peak is Mount Everest, 29,000 feet.

Compared with the very gradual slope of the Himalaya range on its northern side towards the lofty plateaux of Tibet, the descent on the southern side towards the plains of Hindustan is sudden and great. Still the distance from the first outer hills to the central range is rarely less than eighty miles direct, and often much more. There is thus ample space within the mountain-zone for innumerable valleys of greater or less size; such are the famous valley of Kashmir, and the valleys forming the states of Nepal, Bhotán, Sikkim. Along the base of the outer hills there is a damp and generally malarious belt of jungle, called the Tarai, inhabited chiefly by wild beasts. The rainfall is much heavier in the eastern than in the western parts of the Himalayas, consequently the forests on the slopes in Sikkim and Bhotán are very dense, and the vegetation generally very luxuriant, whilst the slopes of the western Himálayas are more thinly clad with forest, and naked precipitous crags are of constant occurrence.

West of the point at which the Sutlej bursts through the outer ranges, the Himálaya loses the chain-like linear character it has to the east, and breaks up into many subparallel and intersecting ranges of great elevation in the wild border highlands between Kashmir, the Punjab, and Kabul, as far as the Indus.

West of the Indus, from the Hindu Kush on the north (which separates Kabul proper from Central Asia) as far

south as the Bannu district of the Punjab, the western mountain-zone is of the same character, though of somewhat less general elevation. The Safed Koh is a lofty range running nearly east and west from the neighbourhood of Peshawar to that of Kabul; it is therefore nearly at right angles to the axis of the western mountain-zone. On each side of this range runs one of the great passes leading to Kabul; that on the north, along the ravine of the Kabul river, being called the Khaibar; that on the south, partly following the course of the Kuram river, being called the Kuram, with the famous ascents of the Pewár Kohtal and the Shutargardan Pass.

From a point nearly opposite Bannu to one nearly opposite the confluence of the Indus and the Sutlej, the Sulemán range runs nearly north and south, parallel with the Indus, and separating the plains of the Punjab from the Kabul plateau and Sewistan. Its highest peak, the Takht-i-Sulemán, or Solomon's Throne,' is under 12,000 feet. Southward the range becomes less elevated, until at length it turns westward, to bound the plain leading up to the Bolan Pass, the great military and commercial road to Quetta, Kandahár, Herat, and Western Asia generally. From this pass southwards the Hálá range, en échelon with the Sulemán, and from 3,000 to 7,000 feet in height, bounds the highlands of Kalát and Balochistán, and skirts the valley of the Indus almost to the sea. All this country is nearly rainless, and is swept by the dry winds from the deserts of Balochistán and Persia, and would be uninhabitable but for irrigation drawn from the Indus or its tributaries.

§ 5. The Plains of Northern India.-The vast plain of Northern India consists of the Indus Valley, the Thar or Great Indian Desert, and the Gangetic Valley. These divisions run into each other without visible interruption; for though the waterparting between the two great rivers is at an elevation of from 800 to 1,000 feet above sea-level at its highest point somewhere north of Delhi, yet the slope on each side is so gradual as to be imperceptible.

The western part of this plain consists of the alluvial valley of the Indus and its tributaries; the saline swamps of Cutch (Kach); the rolling sands and rocky plains of the desert, which covers much of Sind, the south of the Punjab, and Western Rájputána; and the south-easterly margin of this desert in Rájputána, which is less sterile, because it receives more rain and is watered by the Luni. We shall see hereafter that the whole of this region is dry, and some of it almost rainless.

At Mithankot the Indus receives, as a tributary, the collected waters of the Five Rivers, from which the Punjab (Panj-áb Five waters) takes its name. These rivers all rise in the Himálaya, and flow south-west through the Panjáb. These, commencing with the most southerly (which is also the greatest), are the Sutlej, the Biás, the Rávi (on which is Lahore), the Chenáb, and the Jhelam (which drains Kashmir). The plains of the Panjáb slope insensibly from north-east to south-west, from the Himálaya towards the sea. The strips between the rivers are called Doabs, and consist of Bángar land and Khádar land. The Khádar is the fertile fringe of the river below floodlevel within which the river often alters its course from year to year, sometimes deviating many miles from its old channel. The Búngar is the higher land between the rivers, generally arid and sterile, and often bare or covered only with coarse scrub-though in the northern and less dry portion of the Punjab it bears luxuriant crops of wheat.

The water-system of the Ganges drains an area of 391,000 square miles (the area of the Indus valley being less by some 20,000 square miles). The Ganges leaves the Himálaya near Hardwár, and flows to the bay of Bengal, in a direction generally south-east, its course being about 1,500 miles. The Jamuná, or Jamnah, joins it at Allahabad, and above that point has a fair claim to be considered the main stream. Agra, Muttra (Mathurá), and Delhi are on its banks; and the highly fertile tract of land