remotely comparable in splendor and sublimity to what the Himâlaya offers in almost any of its valleys. A continuous ridge nearly double the height and five times the length of the SwissItalian Alps, with a mountain region depending on it, the size of Spain, Italy, and Greece put together in a row, and of which one small portion, Kashmir, looking like a nook nestled in the northwest corner, is as large as all Switzerland,—surely such a ridge gives scope to variety of scenery. We are told that it is not uncommon to stand on some point, from which the eye takes in a semicircular sweep of undulating or jagged snow-line with an iridescent, opal-like glory ever playing along it, and with peaks rising from it at intervals," heaven-kissing hills " indeed!-the least of which is several thousand feet higher than Mont Blanc, like pillars of ice supporting a dome of a blue so intense as to seem solid; while at your feet, forest-clothed and cut by valleys, stretch down the lower ridges, which descend, tier below tier, in four great terraces, into the hot plains of Lower Hindustân. If the spectator had taken. his station on a summit of the northernmost-and highest- ridge, somewhere on the northwest boundary of Nepâl, the grandeur of the physical surroundings would be helped by that of memories and associations. He would there be at the very core and centre of the divine HIMAVAT-to use the fine ancient name, which means " Abode of Winter,” -the region to which the Aryan Hindu has, for ages well-nigh untold, looked with longing and reverence; for there, on the fairest and loftiest heights

he knew, he placed the dwellings of his gods. There they were enthroned in serene and unattainable majesty; there they guarded the hidden storehouses of their choicest gifts to men: for there lay the mysterious caves of KUVERA, the god of wealth, the keeper of gold and silver and other precious ore, and of sparkling gems: there, snow-fed and pure, at a height of about 15,000 feet, slumber the sacred lakes, eternally mirroring in their still waters only the heavens and the mountain wilderness that cradles them; and there, too, cluster the springs of the great rivers, holiest of things,--the INDUS, and the SUTLEJ, and the GANGES, and the BRAHMAPUTRA with the most glorious name-"Son of God," that river ever had. To such regions, all wildness and mystery, all peace and silence, but for the rush of torrents and the music of winds and leaves, worldweary men and women, longing for the rest and beauty of passionless, eternal things, have come age after age, and still come, on long pilgrimages, frequently stretching into years of self-exile in rude forest-hermitages, to drink deep of solitude and meditation, and return, heart-healed and renovated, to the plains below; unless—and thrice blessed those to whom this is given,-they can stay among the mountains and woods, as in the vestibule to a higher world, stripped of all earthly clingings, desires and repinings, patiently and happily waiting for the final release. Thus the Himâlayas have ever been woven into the deepest spiritual life of the people whose physical destinies they helped to shape. They literally bounded their view in every sense, and what

lay beyond was the great unknown North, where dwelt the UTTARA-KURA, the "remotest of men" -whether the spirits of the happy dead or a fabulous race enjoying a perpetual golden age of sinless. ness and bliss, cannot be made out with absolute clearness—perhaps both.

5. A review of all the conditions and manifestations of India's physical life were needed to appreciate the entire range of the influence exercised by that stupendous chain, which, as it is the main feature of India's geography, is also the main agent of her prosperity. Its eternally renewed, inexhaustible treasury of snows is drawn on by the whole of Hindustân through the channels of its noble and numerous rivers, its true wealth-givers, which a thousand branching smaller ridges, dwindling down to mere slopes, direct into as many valleys, breaking the mass into a perfect, nicely graded and distributed network. Indeed, the privileged land gets more than its share of the great store; for some of its largest rivers-the Indus with its companion and later feeder, the Sutlej, and also the Brahmaputra— have their springs and a certain length of course on the northern side of the watershed, thus bringing to their own side much of the rainfall which should by rights go to the far thirstier plains of Tibet and Bokharia. Nor is it only by storing the moisture in its snowdrifts and glaciers, by nursing and feeding India's infant rivers, that the Himâlaya benefits the land it overshadows and protects: it also secures to it the largest rainfall in the world, as far as measured to this day, and regulates the "rainy

season," without which even such rivers would be insufficient to ensure the productiveness of a soil exposed to torrid heat during most of the year. Shut off from the cooling gales of the north, India depends entirely on that peculiar form of tradewinds known as the MONSOONS, or rather on the southwestern monsoon which sets in in June, laden with the accumulated vapors exhaled through many months by the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean, and condensed in mid-air into huge solid banks of clouds. These clouds travel with great swiftness northward across the atmosphere or hang over the land obscuring the light of day, according as the violence of the wind rages or abates, until they are dashed against the stony breast of the Himâlaya, whose elevation infinitely overtops the region of drifting vapors. Shattered with the shock, they discharge their torrents of rain as would a waterfilled skin cut open by a rock against which it was hurled. The monsoon, being abruptly stopped as well as the clouds by the double Himâlayan wall, besides getting involved in the countless narrow valleys and winding passes of the intricate highlands which lead up to it, combined with the tremendous accumulation of electricity, produces the most terrific thunderstorms of the world-and thus the Himâlayas detain and confiscate for the exclusive benefit of their privileged land the supply of waters which cannot sail over their lofty heads, and for want of which the great Central Tableland is doomed to thirst and comparative barrenness. The consequence is that the average yearly rainfalls