CHAPTER V

THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE INDIAN PENINSULA

STATISTICS, —India, including Burma and the native states, possesses a total area
of nearly 1,600,000 square miles, and 287,000,000 inhabitants ; reckoned by
‘he census of 1891.

SOUTH of the Himalayas India may be divided roughly
into two parts: firstly, the area embraced by the
great alluvial plains of the north, which include the
Punjab, Rajputana, and Sind on the north-west, the
United Provinces in the centre, and a great part of the
Bengal province with the deltas of the Brahmaputra
and the Ganges on the north-east; and secondly, the
highlands of Central India and the low alluvial tracts of
the south. The great northern area of low-lying plain
reaches from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean on the
west, and to the Bay of Bengal on the east, and includes
the main arteries of the great river systems of the Indus,
the Ganges and the lower Brahmaputra. “The Indo-Gangetic
 plain comprises the richest, the most fertile, the
most populous, and historically the most famous countries
of India. It covers more than 500,000 square miles, an
area as large as France, the German and Austrian Empires,
and Italy, and it contains 160 millions of people.” «The
alluvial deposits of which it is composed are so comminuted
 that it is no exaggeration to say that it is possible
to go from the Bay of Bengal up the Ganges, through the
Punjab, and down the Indus again to the sea, over a
distance of 2000 miles and more, without finding a pebble,
however small.” ?
Differing widely in its physical characteristics from
Northern India, the second great natural division comprises

! Strachey’s * India,” chap. i,
120