a large trade in indigo, will ever have a sad fame in Indian history on account of the share it took in the terrible events of the Mutiny. Benares, the sacred city of the Hindoos, and Lucknow, another city prominent in the Indian Mutiny, are important towns in the north-west provinces.

5. The Panjab-the plain of the five rivers-is one of the least agreeable parts of India. In summer it is oppressively hot and dry, and except in the vicinity of the rivers the soil is not fertile. This province has an area of 200,000 square miles, and a population of nearly eighteen millions. Delhi, the ancient capital of the Mogul empire, is the chief city.

6. The history of Delhi is the history of a great part of India, and the importance of its site in the eyes of successive conquerors is proved by the ruins of successive cities which strike the eye of the traveller long before the red sandstone walls of the present city come into view. It has witnessed great prosperity, and abject poverty. "Peace and bloodshed, greatness and humiliation, good government and fearful tyranny," have been its lot from the day when it became the capital of an empire, until it was captured during the Mutiny, and placed under British protection. It is now a busy commercial city of nearly 200,000 inhabitants, and a great railway centre.

7. Armritsir is a great trading centre and a noted seat of Sikh learning and religion. In Lahore the GovernorGeneral has a fine palace. Mooltan is another ancient city of the Panjab, but a mere shadow of its former self.

8. The Central provinces occupy the northern portion of the great plateau. The country has an equally varied soil and surface-table-land, river-valley, and forest. The table-lands are broken up by isolated peaks and straggling hill ranges, and the rivers are of the nature of mountain torrents. Some of the valleys are extremely fertile, and cotton, corn, opium-poppies, rice, and sugarcane, are extensively grown. Jubbulpur, Sagur, and Nagpur,* are the chief towns, the former is the capital.

* Nagpur. The city of snakes. Poor, porc, or pura, also ore and patam = a city.

9. The province of Madras may be said roughly to embrace the maritime plains on the south and east of the great peninsula. It has a population about as large as Great Britain and Ireland. Madras is the second of the great provinces of India: but it is by no means so valuable for its size as Bengal, for though it possesses a coast-line of over 1,700 miles, it does not boast of one good natural harbour. Its soil also is not very fertile, and it often suffers from drought.

10. The city of Madras contains over half a million of people, and owing to the large gardens, or "compounds," as they are called in India, it covers an area of nine square miles. During the hot season the temperature is very high, though somewhat modified by a pleasant seabreeze, known to the residents as "the doctor." Madras is a great centre of commerce, and is in railway communication with all parts of India, but is singularly unfortunate in possessing no harbour. A few feet from the shore the surf bursts into a long line of breakers, which thunder for miles along the coast. No European ships can pass this wall of surf, and communication between the shore and the ships in the roadstead is made by means of native boats. Yet in spite of these difficulties, the city does a considerable amount of foreign trade, chiefly in coffee, rice, and hides.

11. The province of Bombay extends along the west of India from Mysore to the plains of Sind on the Lower Indus. Its length is upwards of 1,000 miles, and, unlike that of the Madras province, the coast is broken by some fine harbours. The population numbers about 17,000,000. The surface and the climate of this province are greatly varied, embracing as it does the forest-clad Western Ghâts, the maritime plains between the mountains and the sea, a part of the islands of the Deccan, and the flat arid land of Sind.

12. Bombay island and town form by far the most important part of the province. The city of Bombay* is the most important outlet of Western India, and the

* Bom bahea, the Portuguese for a good port.

great centre of its foreign trade. Railways bring goods for export from the great towns in the valley of the Upper Ganges, and even from Madras. Surat, at the mouth of the Tapti, the site of the first English factory; Puna, the military station of the Deccan; Karachi, the port of Sind, are other important towns.

13. Assam lies to the west of the Brahmaputra. It consists of a series of fertile and well-watered valleys. Rice is largely cultivated near the rivers, and tea on the hill-sides. The province covers a little over 40,000 square miles, and has a population of about 4,000,000.

Rice

14. British Burma includes Arakan, Pegu, and Tenasserim, three provinces which lie along the eastern shores of the Bay of Bengal, stretching from Assam almost as far south as the Indian peninsula itself. Arakan consists of maritime plains suitable for the cultivation of rice, but partly covered with jungle. Pegu is a rich and fertile district comprising the vast delta of the Irawadi. is the chief product of the flat lands, whilst the higher grounds have the finest teak forests in the world. Great quantities of this wood are also obtained from the more mountainous country of Tenasserim. Rangoon, a town with a population of nearly 100,000, is the capital. At the height of the rice season Rangoon is a very busy place, owing to the presence of so many foreign ships taking in cargo. Maulmain, the port of Tenasserim, exports large quantities of teak.

1. Ceylon is a pear-shaped island about five-sixths the size of Ireland. It lies to the south-east of the apex of the Indian promontory, and is separated from the mainland by Palk Strait and the Gulf of Manaar. curious natural barrier, a chain of sandbanks, called Adam's Bridge, almost unites the island with India, and

A

only allows the passage of ships by two narrow channels. The Hindoo poets call the island "the pendent jewel of India;" the more prosaic Dutch compared it to a ham. 2. The interior of the island is a table-land, broken by mountains and valleys. Along some parts of the east coast the shores are bold and precipitous; but on the south and west there is a belt of low land, and this widens out on the north into an almost unbroken plain. The most prominent, if not the loftiest of the mountain peaks, is Adam's Peak.*

3. The low maritime belt and the adjacent islets are fringed with cocoa-nut trees, which grow down to the water's edge, and give the appearance of a green belt rising out of the ocean. Cocoa-nut culture is among the natives the great industry. It furnishes all he wants for food, clothing, drink, and timber. Altogether there are not less than 250,000 acres of cocoa-nut trees in Ceylon. The lower ranges of hills present verdant slopes, and the higher hills are covered with luxuriant forest trees overhung with creepers. The slopes of many of the hills, however, have been cleared, and turned into finely cultivated coffee plantations.

4. The climate of Ceylon remains about the same throughout the year. "Both the monsoons bring rain, which falls on that side of the island which faces the wind for the time, leaving the other, or leeward side, dry. On the one side the rivers are then flooded, on the other dried up." The extensive plains among the mountains are cool and healthy. Here the European, jaded with the heat of the coast and the plains, may regain somewhat of his lost vigour; and, as he sits by a fire and finds blankets necessary at night, begin to get new life into his languid limbs.

5. Besides the cocoa-nut palm and coffee, Ceylon produces cinnamon-the bark of a species of laurel-tobacco, indigo, and cotton, and the timber of some of the forest trees is of great value. Most of the wild animals common in India are wanting in Ceylon, but elephants

* Pedro-talla-galla (8,280 ft.) is the highest point.