ears of grain floating on the surface ; the stupendous embankments, which restrain, without altogether prevent ing, the excesses of the inundations ; and peasants in all quarters going out to their daily work with their cattle in canoes or on rafts. The navigable streams which fall into the Ganges intersect the country in every direction, and afford great facilities for internal communication. In many parts boats can approach by means of lakes, rivulets, and water-courses, to the door of almost every cottage. The lower region of the Ganges is the richest and most productive portion of Bengal, abounding in valuable pro duce. Another mighty river by which Bengal is intersected is the Brahmaputra, the source of whose remotest tributary is on the opposite side of the same mountains which give rise to the Ganges. These two rivers proceed in diverging courses until they are more than 1200 miles asunder ; and again approaching each other, intermix their waters before they reach the ocean. The other principal rivers in Bengal are the Ghagra, Son, Gandak, Kusi, Tistd ; the Hugli (Hoogly), formed by the junction of the Bhagirathi and Jalangi ; and farther to the west, the Damodar and Rupna- rayan ; and in the south-west, the Mahdnadi, or great river of Orissa. In a level country like Bengal, where the soil is composed of yielding and loose materials, the courses of the rivers are continually shifting, from the wearing away of their different banks, or from the water being turned off by obstacles in its course into a different channel. As this channel is gradually widened the old bed of the river is left dry. The new channel into which the river flows is, of course, so much land lost, while the old bed con stitutes an accession to the adjacent estates. Thus, one man s property is diminished, while that of another is enlarged or improved ; and a distinct branch of jurisprud ence has grown up, the particular province of which is the definition and regulation of the alluvial rights alike of
private property and of the state.
The People.—Within the provinces under the Lieu- tenant-Governor of Bengal dwell a great congeries of peoples, of widely diverse origin, speaking different lan guages, and representing far separated eras of civilisation. They amounted in 1872 (including Assam, which then formed part of Bengal), to 66,856,859 souls, or over a million and a quarter more than the whole inhabitants of England and Wales, Sweden, Norway, Denmark (with Jutland), Greece, and all the Ionian Islands, with the total white population, Indians and Chinese, of the United States. The problem of government in Bengal, however, is not one of numbers. It is intensified and infinitely complicated by the fact, that while this vast population is ruled by a single head, it consists of elements so dissimilar as to render it impracticable to place them under any one system of administration. They exhibit every stage of human progress, and every type of human enlightenment and superstition, from the sceptical educated classes, represented by the Hindu gentleman who distinguishes himself at a London Inn of Court and harangues the British public in the Brighton Pavilion, or from a metro politan platform, to the hill chieftain, who lately sacrificed an idiot on the top of a mountain to obtain a favourable decision in a Privy Council appeal. A large section of the people belongs to the august Aryan race, from which we ourselves descend, having a classical language more kin dred to our own than those of the Welsh or Scottish Highlanders. We address the Deity and His earthly representatives, our father and mother, by words derived from roots common to the Christian and the Hindu. Nor does the religious instinct assume a wider variety of mani festations, or exhibit a more striking series of metamor phoses, among the European than among the Indian branches of the race. Theodore Parker and Comte are better known to the rising generation of Hindus in Bengal than any Sanskrit theologian. On the same bench of a Calcutta college sit youths trained up in the strictest theism, others indoctrinated in the mysteries of the Hindu trinity and pantheon, with representatives of every link in the chain of superstition from the harmless offering of flowers before the family god to the cruel rites of Kdlf, whose altars in the most civilised districts of Bengal, aa lately a.3 the famine of 1866, were stained with human blood. Indeed, the very word Hindu is one of absolutely indeterminate meaning. The census officers employ it as a convenient generic to include 42J millions of the popu lation of Bengal, comprising elements of transparently distinct ethnical origin, and separated from each other by their language, customsj and religious rites. But Hinduism, understood even in this wide sense, represents only one of many creeds and races found within Bengal. The other great historical cultus, which, during the last twelve cen turies, did for the Semitic peoples what Christianity accomplished among the European Aryans, has won to itself one-third of the whole population of Bengal. The Muhammadans exceed 20 / millions of souls ; and the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal is, so far as numbers go, as great a Musalman power as the Sultan of Turkey himself. Amid the stupendous catastrophes of the seasons, the river inundations, famines, tidal waves, and cyclones of the lower provinces of Bengal, the religious instinct works with a vitality unknown in European countries, where the forces of nature have long yielded to the control of man. Until the British Government stepped in with its police, and canals, and railroads, between the people and what they were accustomed to consider the dealings of Providence, scarcely a year passed without some terrible manifestation of the power and the wrath of God. Marhattd invasions from Central India, piratical devastations on the sea-board, banditti who marched about the interior in bodies of 50,000 men, floods which drowned the harvests of whole districts, and droughts in which a third of the population starved to death, kept alive a sense of human powerlessness in the presence of an Omnipotent fate with an intensity which the homilies of a stipendiary clergy fail to awaken. Under the Muhammadans a pestilence turned the capital into a silent wilderness, never again to be re-peopled. Under our own rule, it is estimated that 10 millions perished within the Lower Provinces alone in the famine of 1769-70 ; and the first surveyor-general of Bengal entered on his maps a tract of many hundreds of square miles as bare of villages, and " depopulated by the Maghs."
stantly reminded by calamity of a mysterious Supreme Power, have always exhibited deep earnestness in their own modes of propitiating it, and a singular susceptibility to new forms of faith. Great tidal waves of religion have again and again swept over the provinces within even the brief period of the Christian era. Islam was one of many reformed creeds offered to them, and several circumstances combined to render its influence more widely spread and more permanent than that of its rivals. It was the creed of the governing power ; its missionaries were men of zeal, who spoke to the popular heart ; it brought the good news of the unity of God and the equality of man to a priest- ridden and a caste-ridden people. Above all, the initiatory rite made relapse impossible, and rendered the convert and his posterity true believers for ever. Forcible conversions are occasionally recorded, with several well-known instances of Hindus becoming apostates from their ancient faith to purchase pardon for crimes. Such cases, however, were few in number, and belonged to the higher ranks. It
would also appear that a Mughul adventurer now and then
