INDIA, the land of gold and sunshine, has ever been regarded as a region of Romance. In the tales of our childhood magicians and jugglers move amid scenes oppressed by the luscious scents, gay with the flowers, and sparkling with the precious gems and fabrics of India. In the classic page, India is the mysterious bourn to which point the fabulous expeditions of Bacchus and Sesostris; and when history emerges from primeval haze, we see India as the gorgeous eastern boundary of Earth,

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where princes enthroned on elephants offer tribute in solid gold. Nor is there less romance in India's natural history and geography; in the golden ant-hills of Herodotus, in the tree he notes as sheltering ten thousand troops, or his rivers too wide for the eye to reach across. Romance is inherent in the country, steeping even the science, metaphysics, and mythology of this wonderful country in its rainbow-tinted hues.

The name India is not that by which it is known to its own inhabitants, but is first met with in Herodotus and other Greek writers. It comes from the Sanskrit, Sindhu, ocean. First, the name was transferred from the ocean to the river, and then to the country and the people bordering the river, on the banks of which the first Hindu settlements were made. Indus, Ind, or Sindh, therefore signifies the river and adjacent country forming the western boundary of India. The Persians wrote the word with an H, but the Greeks omitted the aspirate; and at present we use both forms, only geographers and historians consider it more correct to limit Hindustan to that part of the country which lies to the north of the Vindhya Mountains, and to apply the name of India to the country north and south, from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin. The Arabians, not aware that Sindh and Hind were the same word in different languages, thought they were two descendants of Noah, who extended their settlements in this direction, and gave each his name to his own respective territories.*

To the north, India is bounded by the Himalaya Mountains, to the west by the Indus, and to the east by the Brahmaputra, but not strictly, for some of the Bengal pro

* Lassen, 'Indische Alterthumskunde,' vol. i. pp. 2, 3.

vinces stretch beyond; to the south it is a peninsula jutting out into the ocean. This vast territory is exceedingly varied, and details of its physical features, inhabitants, and governments, would furnish most interesting subjects for investigation; but a very slight sketch is alone admissible at present, and, in making this, we find it an assistance to separate India into four sections.

I. The Punjaub, Sindh, Rajputana, Malwa, Guzerat, and the Nerbudda River.

II. The Peninsula.

III. Plains of the Ganges.

IV. Bengal.

This must be acknowledged to be a somewhat arbitrary proceeding, but it has the advantage of introducing us, first, to the earliest haunts of the Sanskrit-speakers; second, to the coasts and forests earliest known to Hindu commerce and literature; third, to the scenes of most ancient Brahmanical celebrity; and fourth, to the focus of modern British wealth and government.

It might assist us in remembering these divisions, if we imagined India sketched out as the rude outline of a human figure; such a figure as that, for instance, of Orion or Aldebaran, in the maps of the stars. The Himalaya Mountains would be the head; Sindh, Malwa, etc. would be a bare right arm, with projecting ornaments and weapons; the Peninsula would give the bony legs, partially visible, as the Ghats of Southern India; the basin of the Ganges would represent smooth folds of drapery falling over the left arm; and, lastly, Bengal, with the Ganges divided into many streams, would be the hand of our figure, with extended fingers.

I. THE PUNJAUB DOWN TO THE NERBUDDA,

We begin then with the Punjaub, the border-land between India and many other countries; as India and Assyria, India and Persia, India and Bactria, and, we may almost say, between India and Tartary. At the present day it is occupied by a border population, made up of many races, with a mixed religion, half Hindu and half Mohammedan. The name Punjaub comes from punj, five, and ab, waters,-five rivers flowing through this district. Below the Punjaub the five streams unite as the Indus, which flows through Sindh, attended by a border of fertility, and forming a productive delta at its junction with the sea. Barren sand is however the characteristic not only of Sindh but of the contiguous countries towards the East. Here we find Jessalmere shining out as a green favoured island, and the fertile strip of Cutch stretching like a bridge between Sindh and Guzerat. A salt river, called the Looni, enriches Marwar, and, after a course of three hundred miles, is lost in the Run of Cutch, a fen formed by its deposits and those of other salt, streams from the desert of Dhat. This Run, or marsh, which is a hundred and fifty miles in length and about seventy in breadth, has but one green spot for the refreshment of travellers or their camels. In the dry season it is one great glaring sheet of salt, full of quicksands, and subject to mirage, called "winter castles" by the Rajpoot inhabitants. During the rains the dazzling crystal melts, and presents a dreary spectacle of dirty water, through which the camels wade, even to their saddle-girths.

To the eastward again of these deserts we find the

Aravalli Hills, and "immediately in front of the broadest part stands the noble mountain of Aboo, rising as abruptly from the sandy plain," says Mr. Fergusson, "as an island from the ocean. It seems," he continues, "one vast bubble of granite, that has boiled up from the bottom of what then was the sea, the summit of which, in cooling, has sunk back on itself, forming a valley on its summit, six or eight miles long, which offers a most enchanting contrast to the deserts below." Our author doubts, indeed, if the whole world contains another spot so exquisitely beautiful as the little "Jewel Lake" on the summit of Mount Aboo.*

Sir John Malcolm has gathered all the lands immediately eastward of Sindh into a group, which he calls Central India. It comprehends nearly eight degrees of latitude and nine of longitude, and has a superficial area of 350,000 square miles. Jessalmere and Marwar are the level portions, whilst Ajmere, Oodeypore, and Malwa, etc., form a table-land 2000 feet above the level of the sea, of which the Aravalli Hills are the western and the Vindhyas the southern rampart. This lofty plateau has two declivities; one from west to east, towards the Betwa River, and the other from south to north, towards the Jumna. The Aravalli chain, so distinguished a feature in Central India, is remarkable for its peaks of rose-coloured quartz, and the dazzling slates and schists, which furnish roofs for houses and temples. The insulated hills in the same district are formed of sandstone, capped with ironstone and basalt. Sangor, Chittore, Ajmere, etc., are natural fortresses of this description, requiring little aid from art beyond a low parapet round the top; and sandstone is so abundant, that

* Fergusson's 'Ancient Architecture of Hindustan,' p. 39.