[42

INDIA

of which it is difficult to realise that it ever supported the
swamps and grass jungles in which the rhinoceros was
hunted less than four centuries ago.
Excepting this northern district beyond the Salt range,
‘he plains of the Punjab retain their characteristic flatness
antil they merge into the sands of Rajputana and the Sind
wilderness.
The general aspect of Eastern Sind is much the same
as that of Rajputana, more inhospitable and waste than
anything to be found in the Punjab, and subject to the
scorching influences of the fiercest heat without the modifications
 of a fair rainfall. The desert nature of all this
part of India culminates in the dreary expanse of the Rann
of Kach, which may be described as a great salt waste
struggling towards a final reclamation from the sea, not
yet fully accomplished.
The Derajat, which forms the upper portion of that
strip of trans-Indus territory which reaches from Peshawur
to Karachi, and the trans-Indus districts of Sind have
been largely brought under the influence of irrigation,
and our frontier stations from Kohat to Jacobabad are all
of them buried in trees and surrounded with an area of
most highly developed cultivation. It would be difficult
to imagine a scene of fresher luxuriance than may be
found in the neighbourhood of any of these stations in
the spring months of the year.
Of all the river systems of India the Gangetic is the
most important, for it waters the most populous, the
wealthiest, and the most famous provinces of the Indian
Empire, including within its basin the North-West Provinces,’
 Oudh, and a great part of Bengal. Closely connected
 with it as a river system is the province of Assam,
for the Brahmaputra, which is the central river and main
channel of communication within that province, unites
with the Ganges some 75 miles above its mouth, and
assists it to fertilise lower Bengal. The chief tributaries
of the Ganges are the Jumna, which rises west of it in the
central chain of the Himalayas and joins at Allahabad ; the
L The North-West Provinces and Oudh are now the *° United Provinces.”