Indore

“ The City of Indore is situated 1738 ft. above the sea, on the river Saraswati, near its junction with the Khan. Pop. (1901) 86,686. These figures do not include the tract assigned to the resident, known as “the camp” (pop. 11,118) , which is under British administration. The city is one of the most important trading centres in central India.
Indore Residency, a political charge in central India, is not co-extensive with the state, though it includes all of it except some outlying tracts. Area, 8960 sq. m.; pop. ”

“ He died in 1886, and was succeeded by the present Maháráj-Adhiráj Bahádur. His Highness has visited England, and is known as a Prince of great enlightenment and ability. Like his illustrious father, he has received the rank of a Knight Grand Commander of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India. The area of his State is 8400 square miles; its population about 1,055,000, chiefly Hindus, but including about 73,000 Muhammadans, and 86,000 belonging to various aboriginal tribes. In size the State of Indore may be compared with the kingdoms of Saxony or Wurtemberg, but is larger than either. ”

“ They are tumblers and do feats of strength and also perform on the tight-rope. All five groups, Major Gunthorpe states, are inveterate cattle-thieves; and have colonies of their people settled on the Indore and Hyderābād borders and between them along the foot of the Satpūra Hills. ”

“ In population it may be compared with the Grand Duchies of Hesse or Baden, being more populous than the former, and less so than the latter. His Highness maintains a military force of 3231 cavalry, 6128 infantry, and 65 guns. He is entitled to a salute of 21 guns within the limits of Indore territory, and 19 guns elsewhere.
⁠Residence.—Indore, Central India. ”

“ But what of the roads on which the Doctor never passes? From Vellore's fortress-crowned hills they stretch north and south, east and west, and toward all the intermediate points of the compass. Every city of India forms such a nucleus for the country around. Amid the wheat fields of the Punjab, under the tamarinds of the Ganges plain, among the lotus pools and bamboo clusters of the Bengal deltas, and on the black cotton fields of the Deccan are the roads and the villages, the villages and the roads. ”

“ North-West Provinces (46,905) , a province and lieutenant-governorship of British India, embraces the upper portion of the Ganges Valley and Doab, and reaches from Bengal to the Punjab, enclosing Oudh on all sides but the N.; area twice that of England, is the chief wheat province, and also raises opium, cotton, tea, and sugar; was separated from Bengal in 1835, and with it in 1877 was conjoined Oudh; Allahabad is the capital. ”

“ Those of us who know Northern India have memories of many such a sojourn in the enchanted no-man's-land of a Punjâb river-bed, where the soil on which the tent is pitched one year may be deep stream the next, and the great solemn cranes stalk amongst the young green wheat, and the flocks of flamingoes show rosy-red in the sunrises. ”

“ In the single province of Bengal are districts containing seven million five hundred thousand inhabitants, without a missionary; and in other parts of India you may journey through district after district, and province after province, with millions and millions of inhabitants, and find but two or four men, toiling amid the masses of heathenism around them, as if attempting to empty the ocean by buckets-full, or to tunnel the mountains with bodkins. In other places you will find no man at all to shed one ray of light upon the unbroken darkness of false religion. ”

“ We ought not to forget that Bengal, Madras, Bombay and the Punjab are all dominated by one great central culture. The epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata are epics of not only the Punjab, of Bombay, of Madras but also of Bengal and the rest of India. The great religious institutions are common—I am speaking of the Hindus only—to all the provinces, Each province has got a speciality of its own, I admit, but over and above that all these different provinces are bound together in one common culture. ”

“ Dashing its way through the most formidable barriers, it is entirely unlike the gentle Ganges, which pursues its tranquil course through the plains, meeting no barrier in its entire length. The Indus, so long as it remains north of the Himalaya, traverses a plateau 10,000 feet above the sea; while the Ganges, even at Delhi, is but 1000 feet above the sea. ”

“ You proceed together with these rivers.
"The irresistible Indus proceeds straight, white and dazzling in splendour! She is great, and her waters fill all sides with mighty force. Of all the flowing rivers, none is flowing like her! She is wild like a mare, beautiful like a well-developed woman! "The Indus is ever young and beautiful. She is rich in horses, in chariots, and in garments; she is rich in gold and is beauteously clad! ”

“ The whole of India is watered by rivers, some of which empty themselves into the two largest, the Indus and the Ganges; others discharge themselves into the sea by their own mouths. But all of them have their sources in the Caucasus. At their commencement their course is towards the south; some of them continue to flow in the same direction, particularly those which unite with the Indus; others turn to the east, as the Ganges. ”

“ BUT the name of India can only with propriety be applied to the country which is distinguished in Asia as well as in Europe by the name of Indostan.
THAT part of the western side of Indostan, which is not bounded by the sea, is separated from Persia and the Usbeg Tartary by desarts, and by those mountains which were known to the ancients under the name of Paropamisus: Mount Caucasus forms its barrier to the north, separating it from various nations of Tartars, from the great and little Thibet. ”

“ Now this is a town that lies some way inland from Surat, on the road to the emperor’s great city of Agra, and a place of some importance. And sending me here, where there was but two or three white men beside myself, he trusted I should find the solitude I desired, for ’tis a strange thing in the Indies that when you are once become accustomed to the native Indosthans around you, you heed their presence little more than if they were dogs or cats. ”

“ At the north-eastern angle of that frontier, the Dihang river, the connecting link between the Tsanpo of Tibet and the Brahmaputra of Assam, bursts through the main axis of the range. At the opposite or north-western angle, the Indus in like manner pierces the Himalayas, and turns southwards on its course through the Punjab. This wild region is in many parts impenetrable to man, and nowhere yields a passage for a modern army. Ancient and well-known trade routes exist, by means of which merchandise from the Punjab finds its way over heights of 18,000 ft. ”

“ Nothing finer or more lovely in architecture exists than this faultless monument, this ideal of Saracenic art.
By consulting a map of India it will be seen that few regions in the world present such an array of remarkable cities as have sprung up and flourished in the Ganges-Jumna valley. Here we have Agra, Delhi, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Allahabad, Benares, Mirozapur, Patna, Decca, and Murshedabad. What historic associations arise at the bare mention of these Indian cities! ”

“ But on the north-east, as on the north-west, India has again a land frontier. The Himalayan ranges at the north-eastern angle (in about 28° N., 97° E.) throw off spurs and chains to the south-east, which separate Eastern Bengal from Assam and Burma. Stretching south-eastwards from the delta of the Irrawaddy, a confused succession of little explored ranges separates the Burmese division of Tenasserim from the native kingdom of Siam. ”

“ The great plain extends, with an almost unbroken surface, from the most western to the most eastern extremity of British India, and is composed of deposits so finely comminuted, that it is no exaggeration to say that it is possible to go from the Bay of Bengal up the Ganges, through the Punjab, and down the Indus again to the sea, over a distance of 2000 m. ”

“ SOUTHERN INDIA, THE LAND OF HINDOO TEMPLES
A long line of rocks and a white lighthouse in the midst of them—this is the first sight of India as the traveller approaches Tuticorin, after the sea journey from Colombo. He sees the sun glinting from windows of modern buildings, the tall chimney of a factory and trailing pennons of "industrial" smoke. Far to the left, hills faintly visible beyond the shore appear a little darker than the long, low cloud above them. Then what had seemed to be dark rocks become irregular masses of green trees. ”

“ A journey of nine hundred miles, still over these broad plains of India, will bring us to the city of Agra, which, like Delhi, stands not on the Ganges, but on its great tributary, the Jumna. It is an important city, containing over forty thousand inhabitants. ”

“ In Bengal there are at least trees, and everything is green, and there is the river, which leads to the sea, which leads home. Here there is nothing but dust and ruins, and no way out of it if one is ever so ill; even natives cannot travel in the hot winds.
We have left Captain —— and Giles at Agra to hurry on buildings, make up beds, mosquito houses, &c., and we have come out to visit Neighbour Dholepore and Neighbour Gwalior—only six marches—but then we stay four or five days pleasantly with each, so that we shall be away more than three weeks. ”

“ Geographically, India is that large, distinct, and peculiar portion of the earth, stretching over twenty-eight degrees of latitude, and twenty-four degrees of longitude, and enclosed on all sides by the sea, by the stupendous range of the Himmaylayas, and by two of the greatest rivers in the world, the Indus and Burrampooter—boundaries which divide it from countries and races altogether separate and different. ”

“ And as the region comes within the sweep of the monsoon from the Bay of Bengal, there is not only great heat in the plains and lower valleys, but great moisture as well. The mountain-sides are in consequence clothed with a luxuriant vegetation.
To enter this wonderful region the traveller has first to cross the Ganges—the sacred river of the Hindus. Great rivers have about them a fascination all their own. They produce in us a sense of everlastingness and irresistibility. ”

“ WE see in those parts of Indostan which are frequented by the European nations, the customs or laws which regard lands subject to contradictions, not easily reconcileable. The husbandman who possesses a few fields has the power of selling and bequeathing them, at, the same time that the district in which these fields are included is annually let out by the government to a renter, who pays a certain sum of money to the lord of the country, and receives from the cultivator a certain part of his harvests. ”

“ The distances traversed by the armies are sometimes enormous. Let us open a map of India, and see, for example, the relative positions of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Delhi, Peshawur, and Kurachee at the western mouth of the Indus. Delhi is nearly nine hundred miles from Bombay, more than nine hundred from Calcutta by land, fifteen or sixteen hundred miles from the same city by water-route up the Ganges and Jumna, and nearly fourteen hundred from Madras. ”

“ India is about 1,900 miles in extent from north to south, and 1,600 in breadth in latitude 25° north. The boundaries of this vast country, established by nature for the most part, are the Bay of Bengal (now called a sea in the southern portion) on the south-east, and the Arabian Sea on the south-west. On the north the Himalaya Mountains separate it from China, Thibet, and Turkestan ”

“ But Bengal has other attractions to one who rides over it. This single province of India is five times as large as the State of New York. It is a vast alluvial plain, through which the Ganges pours by a hundred mouths to the sea, its overflow giving to the soil a richness and fertility like that of the valley of the Nile, so that it supports a population equal to that of the whole of the 281 United States. The cultivated fields that we pass show the natural wealth of the country, as the frequent towns show the density of the population. ”

“ From the great centres of population of Upper India went to and from the coast an unceasing stream of traffic, creating at a hundred points along the river's course important marts to which merchants from near and far resorted. In Bengal itself was the seat of many industries and the home of a numerous population whose exploitation offered openings of a promising kind to a great commercial organization of the character of the East India Company. To such a quarter it was inevitable that the English should sooner or later turn their serious attention. ”

“ Benares, with its carved and golden temples, its myriad minarets, and its hallowed waters of the Ganges, is the Holy City of India, the Eternal Rome of the Brahmans, and the Mecca of the Hindus. To bathe in the Ganges is to wash away one's sins, as in the River Jordan, and to die on its bank is to attain heaven. ”

“ Oneypore!
The sacred city of Hindustan! The holy soil where the living descendants of the gods had ruled for over five thousand years—and one of them dead, on unclean, foreign soil—buried in unclean, foreign soil!
An outcast! He, the descendant of Rama, an outcast!
Oneypore! And it was a fascinating town, with crooked streets and low, white houses, cool gardens ablaze with mangoes and mellingtonia and flowering peepul-trees and, in the distance, a gigantic palace, built out of a granite hillside, and descending into the dip of the valley with an avalanche of bold masonry. ”