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by a branch line which leaves the Great India Peninsula
railway at Khandwa. Agra, too, is touched by this narrow
gauge line which thus includes within its network a galaxy
of historical and architectural points of interest such as
no other line in India can rival. In financial importance
 the Rajputana line stands third only to the East
Indian and North-Western lines.
But the traveller who would speed his journey, or the
merchant who would avoid the inconvenience of expense
of a break of gauge, now takes the other line to Delhi and
the north-west—the line which, branching from the Great
Indian Peninsula at Itarsi, makes for Delhi on an almost
directly northward track #74 Jhansi. This is the Indian
Midland, and it is not without its points of interest either,
for it passes by the city of Bhopal through the old centre
of the Buddhist faith at Bhilsa. The caves of Ellora and
Ajanta, most remarkable of all surviving evidences of the
former vitality of Buddhism in India (which, to this day,
elsewhere numbers more votaries than any other religion
in the world) are reached from the station of Nandgaon on
the G.I.P. railway, about half-way to Itarsi from Bombay.
It is not to matters of antiquarian interest only that the
G.L.P. (Great Indian Peninsula) railway owes its wide
reputation amongst railway systems. It is its service to
the country as the carrier of mails, its connection with
Calcutta across the width of the Indian continent by linking
 with the East Indian line at Allahabad, that makes it
great. A few hours’ run carries one from the sea coast up
through the winding passage of the Ghits on to the central
plateau. Once at this elevation the line never descends
again till, after crossing the Narbada and passing Jubbulpore,
 it drops by easy gradients into the Gangetic plain at
Allahabad. Although there is a shorter and more direct
route connecting Bombay and Calcutta than this—one
which is shorter by about 125 miles, and which does not
touch Allahabad—no time is gained by making use of it.
The mails at present invariably follow the Allahabad route,
and the direct line vi4 Nagpur, Bilaspur, and Assensole is
a commercial line only,

INDIA