nate kindred in far-off provinces. To die and be buried on the river bank is the last wish of millions of Hindus. Even to exclaim 'Gangá, Gangá,' at the distance of 100 leagues from the river, say her more enthusiastic devotees, may atone for the sins committed during three previous lives. the fertilizer The Ganges has earned the reverence of the people by Work centuries of unfailing work done for them. She and her tribu- done by taries are the unwearied water-carriers for the densely peopled Ganges. provinces of Northern India, and the peasantry reverence the bountiful stream which fertilizes their fields and distributes their produce. None of the other rivers of India comes near to the Ganges in works of beneficence. The Brahmaputra and the Indus may have longer streams, as measured by the geographer, but the upper courses of both lie beyond the great mountain wall in the unknown recesses of the Himalayas. Not one of the rivers of Southern India is navigable in the proper sense of the word. The Ganges begins to distribute The waterfertility by irrigation as soon as she reaches the plains, within carrier and 200 miles of her source, and at the same time her channel of Bengal. becomes in some sort navigable. Thenceforward she rolls majestically down to the sea in a bountiful stream, which never becomes a merely destructive torrent in the rains, and never dwindles away in the hottest summer. Tapped by canals, she distributes millions of cubic feet of water every hour in irrigation; but her diminished volume is promptly. recruited by great tributaries, and the wide area of her catchment basin renders her stream inexhaustible in the service of man. Embankments are in but few places required to restrain her inundations, for the alluvial silt which she spills over her banks affords in most parts a top-dressing of inexhaustible fertility. If one crop be drowned by the flood, the peasant comforts himself with the thought that his second crop will abundantly requite him. The function of the Ganges as a land-maker on a great scale will be alluded to hereafter. The Ganges has also played a pre-eminent part in the com- The mercial development of Northern India. Until the opening up the great Ganges of the railway system within the past twenty years, her magni- highway ficent stream formed almost the sole channel of traffic between of Bengal. Upper India and the seaboard. The products not only of the river plains, but even the cotton of the Central Provinces, were formerly brought by this route to Calcutta. Notwithstanding the revolution caused by the railways, the heavier and more bulky staples of the country are still conveyed by the river, and the Ganges may yet rank as one of the greatest waterways Traffic on the Ganges. Not diminished by the railway. The great cities. in the world. The through traffic into Calcutta alone, by the Gangetic channels, was valued in 1877-78 at £14,000,000 sterling. At Bámangháta, on one of the canals near Calcutta, 178,627 cargo boats were registered in 1876-77; at Húglí, 124,357; and at Patná, 550 miles from the mouth of the river, the number of cargo boats entered in the register was 61,571. Articles of European commerce, such as wheat, indigo, cotton, opium, and saltpetre, prefer the railway; so also do the imports of Manchester piece-goods. But if we take into account the vast development in the export trade of oilseeds, rice, etc., still carried by the river, and the growing interchange of food grains between various parts of the country, it seems probable that the actual amount of traffic on the Ganges in native craft has increased rather than diminished since the opening of the railways. At well-chosen points along her course, the iron lines touch her banks, and these river-side stations form centres for collecting and distributing the produce of the surrounding country. The Ganges, therefore, is not merely a rival, but a feeder, of the railway. Her ancient cities, such as ALLAHABAD, BENARES, and PATNA, have thus been able to preserve their former importance; while fishing villages like SAHIBGANJ and GOALANDA have by the same means been raised into thriving river marts. For, unlike the Indus and the Brahmaputra, the Ganges is a Gangetic river of great historic cities. CALCUTTA, PATNA, and BENARES are built on her banks; AGRA and DELHI on those of her tributary, the Jumna; and ALLAHABAD on the tongue of land where the two sister streams unite. Many millions of human beings Calcutta. live by commerce along her margin. Calcutta, with its suburbs, contains a population of 794,645 (1876). It has a municipal revenue of £289,844 (1876-77), and a sea-borne commerce of over £50,000,000 sterling, with a landward trade also aggregating close on £50,000,000 sterling. This great city lies. on the HUGLI, the most westerly of the mouths by which the Ganges enters the sea. To the eastwards stretches the delta, till it is hemmed in on the other side by the Meghna, the most easterly of the mouths of the Ganges; or rather the united estuary by which the combined waters of the Brahmaputra and Gangetic river-systems find their way into the Bay of Bengal. The part In order, therefore, to understand the plains of Northern played by India, we must have a clear idea of the part played by the the great great rivers; for the rivers first create the land, then fertilize it, and finally distribute its produce. The plains of Benga rivers. the life of were in many parts upheaved by volcanic forces, or deposited in an aqueous era, before the present race of man appeared. But in other parts they have been formed out of the silt which the rivers bring down from the mountains; and at this day we may stand by and watch the ancient, silent process of landmaking go on. A great Indian river like the Ganges has three Three distinct stages in its career from the Himalayas to the sea. stages in In the first stage of its course, it dashes down the Himalayas, a river. cutting out for itself deep gullies in the solid rock, and plough- First ing up glens between the mountains. In wading across the stage; Sutlej feeders among the hills in the rainy season, my ankles have been sore from the pebbles which the stream carried with it; while even in the hot weather the rushing sand and gravel cause a prickly sensation across the feet. The second stage in Second the life of a river begins at the point where it emerges from stage. the mountains upon the plains. It then runs more peacefully along the valleys, searching out for itself the lowest levels. It receives the drainage and mud of the country on both sides, absorbs tributaries, and rolls forward with an ever-increasing volume of water and silt. Every torrent from the Himalayas brings its separate contribution, which it has torn from the rocks or eroded from its banks. This process repeats itself throughout many thousands of miles; that is to say, down the course of each tributary from the Himalayas and across the northern plains of India. As long as the force of the current is maintained by a sufficient fall per mile, the river carries forward the silt thus supplied, and adds to it fresh contributions from its banks. Each river acquires a character of its own as it advances, a character which tells the story of its early life. Thus, the Indus is loaded with silt of a brown hue; the 1st and 2d Chenab has a reddish tinge; while the Sutlej is of a paler stages of colour. The exact amount of fall required per mile depends river, as upon the specific gravity of the silt which it carries. At a a silt-colcomparatively early stage, the current drops the heavy particles of rock or sand which it has torn from the Himalayan precipices. But a fall of 5 inches per mile suffices to hold in suspension the great body of the silt, and to add further accretions in passing through alluvial plains. The average fall of the Ganges between Benares and the delta-head (about 461 miles) is nearly 5 inches per mile. a great lector. By the time the Ganges reaches the middle of Lower Loss of Bengal (Colgong to Calcutta), its average fall per mile has carryingdropped to 4 inches. From Calcutta to the sea it varies, according to the tide, from 1 to 2 inches. The current is no D power. Third stage of a great river as a silt-depositor. longer strong enough to carry the burden of its silt, and accordingly deposits it.1 In Lower Bengal, therefore, the Ganges enters on the third stage of its life. Finding its speed checked by the equal level of the plains, and its bed raised by the deposit of its own silt, it splits out into channels, like a jet of water suddenly obstructed by the finger, or a jar of liquid dashed on the floor. Each of the new streams thus created throws out in turn its own set of channels to right and left. The country which their many The delta offshoots enclose and intersect forms the delta of Bengal. of Bengal. The present delta of the Ganges may be taken to commence at a point 1231 miles from its source, and 326 from the sea by its longest channel. At that point the head waters of the Húglí break off, under the name of the Bhagirathi, from the main channel, and make their way almost due south to the The main volume pursues its course to the south-east, and a great triangle of land, with its southern base on the Bay of Bengal, is thus enclosed. The deltaic distribu. taries. sea. Between the Húglí on the west and the main channel on the east, a succession of offshoots strike southward from the 1 The following facts may be useful to observers in Bengal who wish to study the most interesting feature of the country in which they live, namely, the rivers. Ten inches per mile is considered to be the fall which a navigable river should not exceed. The fall of the Ganges from the point where it unites with the Jumna at Allahábád to Benares (139 miles), is 6 inches per mile; from Benares to Colgong (326 miles), 5 inches per mile; from Colgong to the delta-head, where the Bhagirathi strikes off (about 135 miles), 4 inches per mile; from the delta-head to Calcutta (about 200 miles), also 4 inches per mile; from Calcutta to the sea (about 80 miles), I to 2 inches per mile, according to the tide. The fall of the Nile from the first Cataract to Cairo (555 miles), is 6 inches per mile; from Cairo to the sea, it is very much less. The fall of the Mississippi for the first hundred miles from its mouth, is 180 inch per mile; for the second hundred miles, 2 inches; for the third hundred, 2.30 inches; for the fourth hundred, 2'57 inches; and for the whole section of 855 miles from the mouth to Memphis, the average fall is given as 4 inches to the mile. The following table, calculated by Mr. David Stevenson (Canal and River Engineering, p. 315), shows the silt-carrying power of rivers at various velocities : Mile per Hour. 0*170 will just begin to work on fine clay. 0'340 will lift fine sand. O'4545 will lift sand as coarse as linseed. 0.6819 will sweep along fine gravel. 13638 will roll along rounded pebbles I inch in diameter. 2'045 will sweep along slippery angular stones of the size of an egg. Ganges. The network of streams struggle slowly downwards over the level delta. Their currents are no longer able, by reason of their diminished speed, to carry along the silt or sand which the more rapid parent river has brought down from Northern India. They accordingly drop their burden of silt in their channels or along their margins, producing almond- They raise shaped islands, and by degrees raising their banks and chan- above surnels above the surrounding plains. When they spill over their rounding banks, the largest amount of silt is deposited in the vicinity of country; their margin. In this way not only their beds, but also the land along their banks is gradually raised. SECTION OF A DELTAIC CHANNEL OF THE Ganges. their banks a. The river channel; bb. the two banks; cc. the surface of the water when not in flood; dd. the low-lying swamps stretching away from either bank, into which the river flows when it spills over its banks in time of flood; e e. the dotted lines represent the level of the river surface. themselves up into canals. The rivers of a delta thus build themselves up, as it were, thus into high-level canals, which in the rainy season overflow their building banks and leave their silt upon the low country on either side. Thousands of square miles in Lower Bengal receive in this way each summer a top-dressing of new soil, brought free of cost for more than a thousand miles by the river currents from Northern India or the still more distant Himálayas-a system of natural manuring which yields a constant succession of rich crops. At Goálanda, about half-way between the delta-head and Junction of Ganges, the sea, the Ganges unites with the main stream of the BrahmaBrahmaputra, and farther down with the Meghna. Their com- putra, and bined waters exhibit deltaic operations on the most gigantic Meghna. scale. They represent the drainage collected by the two vast river-systems of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, from an aggregate catchment basin of 752,000 square miles on both sides of the Himalayas, together with the rainfall poured |