overflow their borders, and spread over new territory, and submerge weaker races.
It is difficult to suppose that the motley populations which occupy India and British Burmah can ever be welded into anything as homogeneous as the Chinese Empire. Meanwhile, it is important to observe that British rule, so far as it has any effect, is tending to obliterate the religious differences between Mahommedan and Hindoo, and the racial differences between the Bengalee and the Ghoorka, the Sikh and the Madrassee. Whether England retain her rule or be superseded by some other power, or give place to an independent state or states, it is permissible to hope that the old days of sanguinary misrule, when whole tracts were desolated by Pindarees, are never likely to recur. Even if we assume a state of things such as has been witnessed in South America, a cleavage into a number of small states, incessant revolutions and wars, there seems no reason why the Peninsula should not recover itself, as South America has to some extent done, so that population and wealth might increase in it. It can maintain a much greater population than it has within its own borders 50 per cent more if it be peopled as China is; and it is barred from any great increase to the east by the fact that its people could hardly hope to contend against the Chinese. To the west, however, there is a possibility of expansion over Beluchistan, which is not all desert,[1] and over Afghanistan, which is not all moun-
- ↑ Of the five provinces forming Beluchistan, Makran, the ancient Gedrosia, seems to be the worst, but the others have large patches of good land, the area of which might be increased by irrigation. Brahmi Khan (1755-95) introduced gardens with considerable success (Oliver's Across the Border, chap, ii.) Captain Christie says of the little district of Seistan: "The country, although now inhabited by Afghans and Beloochees in felt tents, still bears the marks of former civilisation and opulence, and there are ruins of villages, forts, and windmills along the
