THE INDIAN PENINSULA 153

Parting the north of India from the south is the long
trough of the Narbada and the valley of the Sén. The
latter belongs to the Gangetic system, but its characteristics
 are, at any rate in the upper part of.its course, much
the same as those of the Narbada. We have a graphic
description of the Narbada (which holds its own straight
course with little assistance from tributaries, either north
or south) from the pen of Sir Lepel Griffin : “Through
this country, which is but a network of hills, rising in
some places to a considerable height, runs in an almost
straight course the revered and miracle-working stream of
the Narbada, which, in a few years’ time, is to displace
the Ganges itself in the religious estimation of the Hindus.
Of all the rivers in India there is probably no one which
is surrounded by more romance and mystic interest than
the Narbada, whilst, for strange and fantastic beauty, it
takes high rank amongst the celebrated rivers of the
world ; but its beauties are little-known to English travellers.
 A few may perhaps see it where it falls into the
Gulf of Cambay, below Broach; some may cross it at
Hoshangabad or at Mortakka, where the branch lines to
Rajputana, Bhopal, and Gwalior leave the main line of
the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. A large number of
tourists halting at Jabalpur, which is, as it were, the very
centre and omphalos of India, spend a few hours in visiting
the holy river, which here flows through marble rocks of
some, though exaggerated, beauty, and beyond this the
sight-seeing traveller knows nothing of the Narbada, although
 its course is everywhere beautiful from its rise at
Amarkantak, at the southernmost point of the Rewah
state in Central India till, dashing in a thousand rapids
and whirlpools through the Vindhya and Satpura ranges
in the Bhil country, it bursts in a broad stream into the
Bombay plain below. From its birthplace to its grave
in the sea the Narbada is an object of superstitious veneration,
 and in a country like India, where water, to the
unscientific mind, signifies more than even the sunlight
and heat, the vivifying principle of Nature which changes
the desert into a flowering garden, the adoration of