Whilst steaming towards the great City of Palaces one has ample time to read up the history of the noble river—to learn of its birth in a Himalaya snow-bed 13,800 feet above the level of the sea, where it first assumes its course, barely 29 feet wide, and fifteen inches deep. During the first 180 miles of its course it drops to an elevation of 7,024 feet. At this point (Hardwar) it has already gained a discharge of 7000 cubic feet per second! During the next 1000 miles of its journey seawards, the Ganges collects the drainage of its catchment basin, and reaches Rajmahal, 1170 miles from its source. It has here a high flood discharge of 1,800,000 cubic feet of water per second, and an ordinary discharge of 207,000 cubic feet—the longest duration of flood being about forty days.
The maximum discharge of the Mississippi is 1,200,000, that of the Nile only 362,000, and that of the Thames 6600 cubic feet of water per second. I take these figures from L. D. A. Jackson’s “Hydraulic Manual,” as illustrating the great supremacy of the Ganges. The mouth we are now steaming up is 20 miles broad, with a minimum depth in the driest season of 30 feet, yet it is but one of the many openings which spread over 200 miles on the sea coast of Bengal. In endeavouring to convey an idea of the Ganges, we must dismiss from our minds any lurking comparison of its gigantic stream with other rivers we might be familiar with in any other part of the world.
A single one of its many tributaries—the Jumna—has an independent existence of 860 miles, with a catchment basin of 118,000 square miles, and starts from an elevation at its source of 10,849 feet above sea-level.
As a factor in the commercial welfare of India the Ganges plays an important part. Until the opening of the railways its waters formed the almost sole channel of traffic between Upper India and the sea-board. The products not only of the river plains, but even those of the central provinces, were all brought by this route into Calcutta.
Notwithstanding the revolution caused by the railways, the heavier and more bulky staples of the country are still carried by water, and the Ganges still ranks as one of the great waterways in the world. Many millions of people live by the river traffic along its margin.
Besides this, the Ganges is a river of great historic cities. Calcutta, Patna, and Benares are built on its banks; Agra and Delhi on those of its tributary, the Jumna; and Allahabad on the tongue of land where the two streams meet.
