|50.
North Bengal Mounted Rifles, Lebong.| |51.
The same—Sword Pegging.| |52.
Coolies at Darjeeling.| In contrast with these scenes are now two slides illustrating the volunteer service of the white tea planters. Of these the second shows tent-pegging on the Lebong parade ground, above the Rungeet river. This form of tent-pegging is with a sword, and not with the more usual lance. Here is a scene showing Darjeeling coolies returned from work in the tea gardens.
|53.
The Rungeet Gorge.| |54.
The same.| |55.
The Rungeet Bridge, Sikkim.| |56.
A Himalayan Glacier.| |57.
Glacier-fed Torrent in the Himalaya.| |58.
Cane Bridge in the Himalaya.| Finally we have two views in the gorge of the Rungeet river, between Darjeeling and Sikkim, with precipitous sides, and then a glimpse of the Rungeet bridge. The Rungeet drains from the hills of Darjeeling, and from the snow mountains beyond, into a tributary of the Ganges. Several hundred such torrents burst in long succession through deep portals in the Himalayan foot hills and feed the great rivers of the plain, the Brahmaputra and the Ganges. They are perennial rivers, for they originate in the melting of the glaciers, and the Himalayan glaciers cover a vast area, being fed by the monsoon snows. Nearly all the agricultural wealth of Northern India owes its origin to the summer monsoon.
|59.
Map of the Himalayan River System.| To understand the fundamental conditions governing the Indian climate let us examine the two concluding maps of this lecture. On the first of them all the country with an elevation of more than fifteen hundred feet is coloured with a dark brown, and that with a lower elevation is coloured a light brown. A great angle of the Indian lowland is seen to project northward into the Asiatic upland. For fifteen hundred miles the Himalaya limits the lowland with a gracefully curving mountain edge, and from this edge there flow the series of tributaries which gather to the rivers Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra. Beyond, to the south, are seen in dark brown the higher portions of the Deccan plateau.
|60.
Map of South-West Monsoon.| Now compare with this the succeeding map, which shows the winds of the summer time and the average rainfall. The winds sweep in from the southwest, but as they cross Bengal they bend so as to blow from the south and then from the southeast. The dark arrow with the broken shaft striking northwestward through the heart of India represents the usual track of the storms which prevail in the Central Provinces during the summer season, producing the havoc along the Madras coast and northward, of which we spoke in the second lecture. The maximum rainfall, it will be seen, occurs in three regions—first on the west face of the Western Ghats, and on the west face of the mountains of Ceylon; secondly in the east of the Indian Peninsula near the track of the storm centres; and thirdly along the south face of the Garo hills and of the Himalayas north of Bengal, and on the west face of the various mountain ranges of Burma. In other words, in the first and third cases the rain is due to the winds striking the mountain ranges, and is great only on the windward faces of those ranges. In the second case the rainfall is mainly the result of the storms. On the other hand, there is drought at this season under the lee of the mountains of Ceylon and of the Western Ghats, and again in a comparatively small belt, near Pagan, along the Irawaddy river, between the western and the eastern ridges of Burma. Tibet, which is under the lee of the Himalayas, and northwestern India, which is out of the track of the southwest winds, are wide deserts. This map explains the exceptional fertility and density of population of the Province of Bengal.
|Repeat Map No. 1.| India is so vast a country, and so varied, that no traveller can hope to visit all parts of it. On our journey from Calcutta to Darjeeling, we have left the province of Assam away to the east of us. Assam is a through road nowhither, for high and difficult mountains close the eastern end of its great valley. Moreover, though it has vast natural resources, Assam is a country which throughout history has lain for the most part outside Indian civilisation, and, even to-day, has but a sparse population and a relatively small commercial development. Let us, then, just remember in passing that this remote province of India has a geography which, though simple, is built on a very grand scale.
The San-po river rises high on the plateau of Tibet northward of Lucknow. For more than 700 miles it flows eastward over the plateau in rear of the Himalayan peaks; then it turns sharply southward and descends steeply through a deep gorge little known, for it is tenanted by hostile tribes. Where it emerges from the mountains the river has a level not a thousand feet above the sea, and here, turning westward, it forms the Brahmaputra—that is to say, the Son of Brahma, the Creator. The Brahmaputra flows for 450 miles westward through the valley of Assam, deeply trenched between the snowy wall of the Himalayas on the one hand and the forested mountains of the Burmese border and the Khasia and Garo hills on the other hand. The river “rolls down the valley in a vast sheet of water,” depositing banks of silt at the smallest obstruction, “so that islands form and re-form in constant succession. Broad channels break away and rejoin the main river after wide divergences, which are subjected to no control. The swamps on either hand are flooded in the rainy season, till the lower reaches of the valley are one vast shining sea, from which the hills slope up on either side.” The traffic on the river is maintained chiefly by exports of tea and timber, with imports of rice for the labourers on the tea estates. Some day, when great sums of money are available for capital expenditure, the Brahmaputra will be controlled, and Assam will become the seat of teeming production and a dense population. The Indian Empire contains some 300 million people; but, as we learn, it also contains some of the chief virgin resources of the world.