Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/43

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of the district attain a height of between 7000 and 8000 feet, one peak reaching an elevation of 8565 feet; the highest point of the Siwalik range is 3041 above sea-level. The principal passes through the Siwalik hills are the Timli pass, leading to the military station of Chakrata, and the Mohand pass leading to the sanatoriums of Mussooree and Laudaur. The Ganges bounds the Dehra valley on the E. ; the Jumna bounds it on the W. From a point about midway between the two rivers, and near the town of Dehra, runs a ridge which forms the vater-shed of the valley. To the west of this ridge, the water collects to form the Asan, a tributary of the Jumna ; whilst to the east the Suswa receives the drainage and flows into the Ganges. To the east the valley is characterized by swamps and forests, but to the west the natural depressions freely carry off the surface drainage. Along the central ridge, the water- level lies at a great depth from the surface (228 feet), but it rises gradually as the country declines towards the great rivers. To meet the demand for water five canals have been constructed, and are fed by the hill streams. These canals have a total length of 67 miles, irrigate about 10,734 acres, and yield a net annual revenue of about 2300. Jaunsar Bawar, north of the valley, comprises a triangular hilly tract, situated between the Tons and Jumna rivers near their point of confluence, and has an area of about 343 square miles. It is covered with forests of deodars, firs, cypresses, and oaks. The agricultural products consist of rice, mandua (Eleusine corocana), oil seeds, millets, vegetables, and garden crops, such as potatoes, turmeric, red pepper, <fcc. The method of cultivation in the valley does not differ from that adopted in the plains ; but in Jaunsar, the khil or jum system of cultivation is largely practised. This consists in clearing and burning the undergrowth on the steep banks of ravines and hills, and in sprinkling the seed, chiefly millets, over the ashes. The process yields a good crop for about two years, when the sits is abandoned. The principal industries are tea planting and cultivation, rhea cultivation, and recently silk cultivation. The area under tea in 1872 was 2024 acres, yielding an out-turn of 297,828 ft, valued at 17,486. The total revenue derived from Dehra district (exclusive of forests) in 1872-73 amounted to 19,169. Since 1872 the Dehra valley has been subject to the ordinary laws of other settled districts ; but in the hilly division of Jaunsar a less formal code is better suited to the people, and this tract is still " non-regulation." The fiscal arrangements of Jaunsar are also peculiar. The tract is divided into khats, each presided over by a say ana, or head-man. The sayanas engage with the Government for the payment of the land revenue, and exercise police and civil jurisdiction in their respective khats ; whilst a committee of sayanas, subject to the control of the British Superintendent of Dehra Dun, de cide graver disputes affecting one or more khats. Education is progressing rapidly in the Dehra valley. Schools have also been established in Jaunsar. Mussooree has Protestant diocesan schools for European boys and girls ; and similar institutions are managed by Roman Catholic priests for members of that faith. It likewise forms the head-quarters of an active American mission. There is little crime in the district, and in Jaunsdr no regular police are found necessary. The principal places in the district are Dehra, Mussooree, v/ith the military sanatarium of Landaur, and the military station of Chakrata. Dehra town is the civil head-quarters of the district, and is constituted a municipality. It con tained (1872) a total population of about 7000 souls, (5000 Hindus, and 2000 Mahometans). The municipal income is mainly derived from a house tax. Dehra is the head quarters of the 2d Gurkha regiment, and of the Great Trigonometrical Survey. The hill station of Mussooree is a favourite summer resort. Its population varies according to the season of the year. During the winter months it is almost entirely deserted. Landaur, the military depot for European convalescents, is really a portion of Mussooree. Chakrata is a hill station for a British regiment of infantry. The census of 1872 returned the population of the entire district at 116,953 souls, of whom 102,814 were Hindus, 12,427 Mussul mans, 3061 Europeans, 191 Eurasians, and 460 native Christians. The Binhmans numbered 10,279, Rajputs or military caste 33,125, Baniyas or traders 2664. The Brahmans and Rajputs chiefly belong to the spurious hill clans bearing these names. The Mahometan population consists principally of Pathans and Shaikhs.


DEISM is the received name for a current of theological thought which, though not confined to one country, or to any well-defined period, had England for its principal source, and was most conspicuous in the last years of the 17th and the first half of the 18th century. The deists, differing widely in important matters of belief, were yet agreed in seeking above all to establish the certainty and sufficiency of natural religion- in opposition to the positive religions, and in tacitly or expressly denying the unique significance of a supernatural revelation in the Old and New Testaments. They either ignored the Scriptures, endeavoured to prove them in the main but a helpful republication of the Evangelium ceternum, or directly impugned their divine character, their infallibility, and the validity of their evidences as a complete manifestation of the will of God. The term deism is not only used to signify the main body of the deists teaching, or the tendency they represent, but has of late especially come into use as a technical term for one specific metaphysical doctrine as to the relation of God to the universe, assumed to have been characteristic of the deists, and to have distinguished them from atheists, pantheists, and theists, the belief, namely, that the first cause of the universe is a personal God, but is not only distinct from the world but apart from it and its concerns. The words deism and deist were treated as novelties in the polemical theology of the latter half of the 16th century in France, but were used substantially in the same sense as they were a century later in England. By the majority of those historically known as the English Deists, from Blount onwards, the name was owned and honoured. They were also occasionally called rationalists. Free-thinker (in Ger m&ny,freidenker) was generally taken to be synonymous with deist, though obviously capable of a wider signification, and as coincident with esprit fort, and with libert/n in the original and theological sense of the latter word. Naturalists was a name frequently used of such as recognized no god but nature, of so-called Spinozists, atheists ; but both in England and Germany, in the 18th century, this word was more commonly and aptly in use for those who founded their religion on the lumen naturce alone. The same men were not seldom assaulted under the name of t heists ; the later distinction between theist and deist, which stamped the latter word as excluding the belief in providence or in the immanence of God, was apparently formulated in the end of the 18th century by those rationalists who were aggrieved at being identified with the naturalists. The chief names amongst the deists are those of Lord Herbert (1581-1648), Blount (1654-1693), Tindal (1657- 1733) Woolston (1669-1733), Toland (1670-1722), Shaftesbury (1671-1713) Bolingbroke (1678-1751), Collins (1676-1729), Morgan (1-1743), and Chubb (1679-1746). Annet, who died in 1768, and Dodwell who made his contribution to the controversy in 1742, are of less importance. Of the ten first named, nine appear to have been born within twenty-five years of one another ; and it is noteworthy that by far the greater part of the VII. 5