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INDIA

Bay of Bengal, we must refer to one comparatively minor
system (although it drains an area about as large as
France) which includes the waterways of two districts of
the Bengal Province (Chota Nagpur and Orissa) and of
the eastern half of the Central Provinces. This is the
Mahanadi system, which is as complicated and as difficult
to trace as that of the Narbada is straight and simple.
The Mahanadi and the Brahmani combined find their
exit to the sea by a labyrinth of channels intersecting the
delta to the east of Cuttack. All the characteristics of
the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra are repeated in
the delta of the Mahanadi. Here, again, we encounter
wide and water-logged jungles near the coast, backed by
thousands of acres of rice fields, with all the steamy accessories
 of the lower Bengal climate. Here, again, we find
a mild-mannered and enervated race of people, scantily
clothed, and passing an amphibious existence from year
to year, only stirred into occasional bursts of fanatical
enthusiasm by the rites and ceremonies which attend the
great Jagannath festival. This most ancient centre of
Hindu superstition is situated at Pori, on the coast due
south of Cuttack, and though these prehistoric and mystic
rites have been shorn of many of their most attractive
horrors by the determination of an enlightened Government,
 thousands upon thousands of pilgrims still assemble
 periodically to do honour to an exhibition of
Hindu symbolism which they do not in the least understand.

From the highlands immediately south of the Narbada,
where the Wardah (an important tributary of the Godavari)
takes its rise and flows southward through the Dekkan,
another considerable stream also issues on the west, and
flows parallel to the Narbada to the sea. This is the
Tapti. Between the upper branches of the river, the
northern abutment of the Western Ghats forms a high and
distinct range running east and west to a height of
goo0 feet above the sea. The southern spurs slope
gently down to the general level of the Dekkan tableland,
 which extends from this range southwards, and.