supposed to represent half the net value of the produce. The rent settlement department of the State costs £30,000 a year, but the data on which it is worked are purely empirical. The rent charged by the State is generally low, but sub-letting leads to rack-renting. As the right of occupation can be bought and sold, the interest on the purchase-money ought to be allowed for in fixing the rent. At present the man who farms most highly pays most rent. Fully 80 per cent. of the occupied land is still unprotected by irrigation, and as an increasing population has to depend largely on the land for their food, its prices increase and the people suffer. The ryot has not a fixed holding, but changes it at pleasure, the consequence being the land is becoming exhausted, and permanent improvements are not made. The ryots of a village may not pay for more than two hundred acres, and yet in the course of years may temporarily exhaust many hundred acres. If each cultivator were obliged to keep to a given area, the exhausting character of the husbandry would render the soil unfit to yield the scanty produce obtained by the ryot. Shallow tillage prevails over the south of India. The native plough seems to do more work than it really does, for though it is light, owing to its bad shape, it has a great draught and does proportionately less work. The soil is not dressed with manures, although large quantities are available and wasted, and some of the most valuable is consumed as fuel. Measures could be taken to grow wood for fuel without lessening the food-producing area. All that is required is the proper application of labour, of which there is abundance. The cropping of the land is very exhausting, not so much from the crops grown being those that make great demands on the soil, but because nearly the whole are removed and not consumed by the stock of the farm. The ryot knows nothing about rotation in crops. Often he sows three or four kinds of crops together in order to secure one, should the others fail. The lavish use of water in irrigating land does great injury to public health, and renders the soil fit only for aquatic plants, such as the rice-plant. Although irrigation works have not paid well, the country would derive great benefit from the extension of irrigation schemes wisely planned. Wells are usually sunk at the expense of the ryots. Large tracts are well suited for growing wheat and tobacco. However, Indian, and with it Madrasee, agriculture has greatly improved within the last twenty-five years. The arca under dry cultivation has, according to Sir William Rose Robinson, risen from twelve millions to twenty millions of acres, and the area of irrigated land has been increased by one million and a half acres, or has doubled in extent. The water rent has quadrupled, so that the State has done its duty and reaped its reward, but not without benefiting the people. The land-tax is a very heavy charge, but it has steadily diminished from 3s. to 2s. 2d. per acre for dry land. This is due partly to inferior land coming under cultivation; the assessment of wet land has steadily decreased from 14s. to 10s. an acre.

The agricultural population of India, despite fiscal burdens and famines, is improving gradually and surely. There is no serfdom in India. The land is the property of the people, who are intensely attached to the soil; but owing to various circumstances their rights as owners are curtailed, while the crushing greed of the usurer, protected-and even aided-by the process of the English law, renders the ryot's life one continual struggle with poverty, and even famine. The owners of land exercise the same rights as in England. We have simply ratified the conditions of settlement which we found existing

in India. Land passes without the intervention of the State, whether the owner is a "zemindar" (proprietor), or a "ryot" (tenant farmer), though the inequality of tenants under the State and under "zemindars" is a grievance which demands alleviation or abrogation. It is a mistake to speak of revenue tenures, as if revenue had aught to do with title. To talk of the land-tax as rent is mischievous, and the mistake is encouraging agrarian ideas, while in the opinion of most Indian publicists it would be disastrous for the State to take the place of a landlord. In case of bankruptcy the State is simply a first creditor. To talk of tenures in India as some do is almost like treating the water-rate paper in London as a title to property. However, the landtax is a very heavy fiscal demand, amounting to one-half the net produce of the land, a proportion which in England would go a long way to arrest improvement.

Some of the chief native States of India we shall refer to at a later period of our survey. But Mysore, since the year 1832, when Lord William Bentinck deposed the last ruler of the old Hindoo line, has been in all but name a British province. Under the tutelage of the English ruler the province has increased in prosperity. The people have become more numerous, agriculture has improved, and the revenue has increased. But in 1881 the young prince comes of age, and in accordance with arrangements for some time in progress, Mysore is to pass at once under the thrall of its native ruler, though the change is not hailed with much satisfaction by the people of the country, who have tasted the peace and justice of European government. But Bangalore, one of the healthiest and most pleasant of the Indian sanitaria, will, with a strip of territory connecting it with the British territory, most likely be retained, while Seringapatam, including the old Hindoo capital, which has been British territory since 1799, will be given in exchange. In Mysore there are, however, many European planters whose rights must be protected. They have done much to develop the resources of the country, which, owing to its moisture and elevation over the sea level, is not nearly so hot as might have been expected from its position. Tigers and elephants abound in the wooded villages, and much of the coffee now exported from Madras is grown in the highlands of Mysore.

BOMBAY.

When Charles II. married the Infanta of Portugal she received as dowry the then little valued island of Bombay, which was held by the Portuguese. The merry monarch" in his turn made it over to the East India Company in 1688, and under the English rule it has ever since continued. The island of Bombay is, however, but a small part of the Presidency, which in extent almost equals the German Empire. The native States occupy about one-third of it, Sindh one-fourth, and Bombay Proper the remainder of the 188,000 miles of which the Presidency consists, albeit it is much smaller than either Bengal or Madras. The length of the province is 1,050 miles, and its coast line, though for the most part regular, is broken by many fine harbours-such as Bombay, Kurrachee, and Karwar. Of the population, which numbers over 26,000,000, including the 9,000,000 of the tributary States, over 76 per cent. are Hindoos; the remainder are chiefly

Mohammedans and sectaries of various faiths, savage and civilised. The physical features of the country may be summed up briefly. Bombay Presidency consists of a long strip of land along the rock-bound shores of the Indian Ocean. The Western Ghauts (p. 182) run in a parallel line with the coast, but in the north a continuation of the Suliman range (p. 188) separates British India from Beloochistan. The leading feature of Sindh, in the valley of the Indus, is the low range of sand-hills; after crossing which we come to the isolated hills of Kachh and Kattiawar, and then to the rugged and mountainous country south of the Tapti, the hills of which sometimes overhang the ocean, and generally run parallel to it, at a distance nowhere exceeding fifty miles. These are the northern extremity of the Sahyadri, or Western Ghauts. In the vicinity of these hills, particularly in the north, the

country is rugged and broken, and distinguished by the presence of isolated peaks, masses" of rock, and spurs, which, running eastward, form water-sheds for the great rivers of the Deccan. Sindh, Gujerat, the Concan, the Deccan, and the Carnatic are the chief level tracts. Sindh-also written Sinde or Scinde-is indeed a flat, arid land, where crops can only be reared by irrigation. Gujerat is for the most part a rich plain, and the Concan is a creek-intersected, rugged, and "difficult" country. The plains of the Deccan are traversed by great rivers, but as the rainfall is uncertain vegetation is usually blank or absent during the greater part of the year. Finally, the Carnatic, or country south of the River Krishna, consists, to use Dr. Hunter's words, "of extensive tracts of black or cotton soil, in a high state of cultivation." The great river of Western India is the Indus (p. 183), but the Narbada, the Tapti, and other minor streams intersect the region we have now entered upon, and from the hill ranges at certain seasons of the year wild mountain torrents rush brawling to the sea (p. 182). The Manchar Lake, situated on the right bank of the Indus, will, during the

rainy season, sometimes cover an area estimated to contain 180 square miles; but the Rann, or "Run" of Cutch, is the most remarkable physical feature of Western India. This depression occupies an area of 8,000 square miles, and forms the western boundary of the province of Gujerat; but whether it is an arm of the sea whence the water has receded, or a lake whose seaward barrier has been swept away, is not yet settled. In all likelihood it originated in some terrestrial convulsion, by which a great tract of country was lowered. At all events it is, according to the season of the year, "a salt marsh, an inland lake, or an arm of the sea." In the dry season it is strewn with salt, which is collected and sold extensively throughout the Presidency; when flooded it converts the territory of the Cutch (or Kachh) into an island.

The forests of Bombay cover the hills throughout almost their entire extent, but those of the alluvial plains are confined to a comparatively small area of Sindh or close to the banks of the Indus. Mineral wealth is absent from Bombay, except in the form of building stones and the iron ore of Teagar, which, moreover, cannot be smelted on an extensive scale, owing to the absence of fuel.

Most of the Indian crops grow well in different parts of the country, and the wheat of Sindh and Gujerat is exported in large quantities to Europe. Barley is also grown in the northern parts of the country, and cotton, sorghum, bajra (Holcus spicatus), sugar, rice, and various pulses occupy a large acreage, though none of these are grown to anything like the extent they might be under a better system of culture and by a people more energetic. At one time cotton-weaving was extensively carried on, but since the influx of cheap Manchester manufactures this undertaking has declined to very small proportions. However, in localities the distance of which from railways has lessened foreign competition, excellent printed goods are manufactured, and in Bombay and other parts of the Presidency cotton-mills have been erected. Silk fabrics, carpets, rugs, gold and silver cloth, embroideries, pottery, brass and copper utensils, jewellers' work, &c., also occupy the attention of a considerable portion of the population. Bombay is, indeed, destined in time to be a large manufacturing region. Already the large steam-mills of the cities are turning out a class of goods which have almost driven the inferior qualities of English fabrics out of the market; and in time, as the cost of European superintendence and the importation of machinery are lessened, they will be able to render the country almost independent of English cloths. The Bombay spinners are handicapped by the cost of fuel; but, on the other hand, they are favoured by the abundance of cheap skilled labour around them, and by the fact that, now that railways and steamers bring nearly all parts of the country into rapid communication with each other, they do not require to pay heavy freights for bringing their raw material to the factories, nor to pay equally heavy taxes on the manufactured article before it can reach its purchasers. Bombay has different climates in different parts of the country. Sindh is as dry and hot as the deserts of Africa. During the six sultriest months of the year the water of the Indus at Haidarabad reaches blood-heat, and in Upper Sindh the thermometer has been known to record 130° in the shade. The highlands of the Deccan are, on the contrary, pleasant during most part of the year, as are the Mahratta country and the hills where the Europeans seek a refuge during the "heated term "

(p. 188).

But in Cutch and Gujerat the temperature is high, and in Concan, owing to the great rainfall, is even more exhausting; while in Bombay island the weather for a great part of the year is exceedingly oppressive to Europeans, even though the heat is tempered by the sea-breezes. From June to October, except in Sindh, where the south-west monsoon exerts little influence, travelling, owing to the volumes of rain which accompany that wind, is difficult and unpleasant.

Bombay island and town is, however, infinitely the most important part of the Presidency, albeit the territory now comprised in it formed in earlier times several distinct Hindoo kingdoms. The city of Bombay-that is, Bom Bahea, the Portuguese for "good port"-is the most important outlet of Western India, and the great emporium of its trade with the outside world. The system of railways pours into it the trade of the north, the valley of the Ganges, the Central Provinces, and Madras, though the island on which it is situated is not over twenty-two square miles in area. In reality, however, as it is now connected with the mainland by the railway causeways, the term "island" is no longer applicable to the plain enclosed by two parallel lines of hills on which the city is built. When first it passed into the hands of England it was considered but a poor dowry to come with a princess; but before long it rose to be one of the chief Indian settlements, a position it still keeps, in spite of some reverses which it has sustained. Bombay has no great navigable rivers flowing past its wharves, as has Calcutta, which may be said to be the entrepôt for both the Ganges and the Brahmapootra. Neither is it, like the capital of Bengal, the outlet for a variety of crops, cotton, grain, and opium being its chief exports. Yet it is rapidly becoming the chief commercial city of India, and has already a population of 650,000, whose home is cast amid a pleasant panorama of sea, mountain, and islets, the approach to Bombay from the ocean being one of the many bits of scenery which have been compared to the Bay of Naples. The streets of the city are unusually well built, and some of the European hotels and commercial buildings are of a size quite unusual for India. The native bazaars are also fine buildings; and though the dwellings of the Europeans, which lie at a distance from the native and commercial quarters, are not so imposing as those of Calcutta, some of the residences, especially those on Malabar Hill (p. 232), are sumptuous homes, and so far as picturesque surroundings and position are concerned, may hold their own with those in similar suburbs in any town of Hindostan. They are, as is usual in India, cach surrounded with a "compound," and are well suited to the climate of the country and the habits of the people. Among the most enterprising citizens are the Parsees (p. 236), the remnant of the ancient fire-worshippers of Persia who fled here in early times. They are the chief bankers, merchants, and shipbuilders, and in loyalty and public spirit yield to no class of the community, native or foreign. No other city in India-this is, I believe, generally conceded, in spite of the lively rivalry which prevails among the different Presidencies and Provinces -approaches Bombay in culture and social progress. Its enterprise is also great, and its prosperity equal to its efforts to attain it. Its water-supply is brought from Vehar, fourteen miles distant, and is abundant and good. Six miles from the city are the Caves of Elephanta, which, though now in decay, are still wonderful specimens of the skill and patience of the old Buddhist and Jain architects, who hewed them out of the