GANGES RIVER
Born in northern India, in an ice-cave beneath the Himalayan snows, Ganges, the sacred river of the Hindus, breaks through the last mountain barrier just above ancient Hardwar. At first scarcely more than a series of broad shoals, long deep pools and rapids, the river keeps to a south-easterly course until Cawnpore is reached, that blackest spot on the Indian conscience, for here on a flight of steps. Massacre Ghat, leading down to the Ganges, 600 women and children were killed during the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
The Holy Waters of "Mother Ganga " When one-half of its journey through the most densely populated region of the world is done, the Ganges is joined by a sister stream, the Jumna, their doab (land between two rivers) being irrigated by two very elaborate and costly canal systems fed from the Ganges. The little point of land thrust out into their united swirling waters is, next to Benares, the holy of holies for the Hindus ; here they come by hundreds of thousands each year to wash away their sins in muddy " Mother Ganga," which is here deep enough to bear all sorts of small native craft and navigable throughout the rest of her 1,540-mile journey to the sea.
In a great circle the river sweeps past Benares, with every caste and race of Hindu India swarming like a busy ant-hill down its drab stone ghats (steps) into the purifying flood of the Ganges, for the everlasting good of their souls and the cleansing of their bodies. At the head of its delta, but atill 240 miles from the Bay of Bengal, the Ganges, having dropped nearly to sea-level, slackens its pace, and begins to deposit along its banks the precious load of silt brought down from the Himalayas, Crocodiles of the Ganges Delta
Eighty miles from the sea, at Calcutta, where smoke belches from factory and mill chimneys, the Ganges (called Hugli here) is choked with shipping. The rest of the Ganges lelta is a labyrinth of crocodile-infested waterways and ever-shifting river channels in which the native goes to market, calls on his neighbours, and even travels to his fields, with his patient water-buffalo, in a boat, not on a road. In the spring thousands of acres of growing rice are submerged up to the head of the grain, and the whole country looks like part and parcel of the sea. The volume of flood water that comes down makes short work of embankments, and often whole villages have been wiped away in the course of a single night.
HIMALAYA MOUNTAINS
By comparison the Himalayan is not an
extensive mountain system, for its length is only about 1,500 miles,
its average breadth about 200 miles. In elevation, however, it is unique. From the
southern of its two ranges, between 50 peaks spring more than 23,000 feet in the air, overtopping ail mountains on the
earth. Mount Everest,
the highest of the Himalayas, is 29,002 feet, or nearly five and a half miles high; and the average elevation of the passes is 18,000 feet.
Lying on the northern frontier
of India, the Himalayas extend from the
great bend of the Indus River to the
Brahmaputra on the east, and separate the
plateau of Tibet from the plains of the Ganges. They are located in the
sub-tropic latitude, so the snow line is
lifted to 16,000 feet. The lofty southern range forms a wall
which intercepts the heat and moisture from the Indian Ocean. At some points on the southern slope 600 inches of rain fall in the course of a year, while the inner range and
the Tibetan tableland are dry, cold,
and half-desert.
Famous Darjeeling Tea Gardens Up
to 5,000 feet on the southern slope the tea plant is cultivated
in the famous gardens of Darjeeling and
other places. Here, and at Simla and elsewhere, are fashionable pleasure and health resorts for civilians and British soldiers in India. Grains
and fruits are grown up to 12,000 feet, and in the summer months herds of cattle are pastured on grassy slopes up to 18,000 feet.
Tigers, leopards,
and apes are perils of the habitable regions. The passes are blocked with snow from November to May. From melting snow and glacial fields, innumerable streams and cascades drop down through wild gorges to supply India's
three great rivers with the floods which they pour every summer into the Indian Ocean.
The Hindus from ancient times have held the Himalayas in reverence ae the home of the gods, Pious pilgrims still
ascend to the source of the sacred Ganges for seasons of penitence and prayer. To people coming up from the steaming heat of the valleys, the greatest marvel of all is the snow-mantled, jagged ridge-pole of this roof of the world." The name Himalaya is from two Sanskrit words which mean " dwelling-place of the snow".
THE INDIAN OCEAN
Two thousand years ago, when mariners were still venturing only on the most cautious coastal voyages along the Atlantic coast, the Indian Ocean could already boast established trade routes, and the Egyptian Greeks boldly made their way across the open sea between Arabia and Hindustan through they possessed neither chart nor compass. They had nothing to fear if they avoided the hurricane months from December to April, for they had observed that the monsoon winds blow half the year in one direction, half the year in the opposite.
Washing the shores of Asia on the north, the Antarctic continent on the south, Africa on the west, and the East Indian islands, Australia, and Tasmania on the east, the Indian Ocean is the third largest of the five oceans. Its length from north to south is somewhat over 6,500 miles, its breadth 4,000 to 6,000 miles, and its area about 27,500,000 square miles. The average depth is between 11,000 and 14,000 feet, the deepest sounding so far being 20,340 feet off the south-east coast of Java.
At Cape Comorin, the southern tip of India, the Indian Ocean forks into the Bay of Bengal on the east and the Arabian Sea on the west, the latter branching again into the Persian Gulf- Beyond the Arabian peninsula it connects with the Red Sea. From Asia several great rivers enter it—the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Irrawaddy, and the Indus; and from Africa the Zambezi and the Limpopo. Its great islands are Ceylon and Madagascar, the rest of them being mostly small groups.