14.8

INDIA

season, covers the country in one continuous sheet. For
500 miles there is an unbroken succession of fields,
orchards, and mango groves surrounding clusters of
villages, as perfect a picture of rural prosperity as is to
be found in the world. “It would be difficult to find in
any part of the world, on so large a scale, a more striking
prospect of industry and quiet contentment,” The

ABOVE 1000 FTI
200-000 » II
00 mites unoer 200 » [IID

F1G. 46.—The Deltaic Channels of the Ganges. :
scenery in Behar, the northern district of the province
(or lieutenant-governorship) of Bengal does not differ
largely from that of the North-West. This is the land
of indigo and opium, probably the only part of India
where existing traces are still to be found of European
social existence in the eighteenth century. The district
of Bengal proper (or Lower Bengal), comprising the
deltas of the Ganges and Brahmaputra, and the rich low
tracts between those rivers, possesses a scenery which is
unique. The land is intersected in all directions by the