bale of cotton and looking toward the fleets of steamers and vessels
collected off the great cotton-presses awaiting their cargoes, "this
particular scene effects in the mind of a traveler just from America!
India has been to me, as the average American, a dream of terraced
ghauts, of banyans and bungalows, of Taj Mahals and tigers, of sacred
rivers and subterranean temples, and--and that sort of thing. I
come here and land in a big cotton-yard. I ask myself, 'Have I left
Jonesville--dear Jonesville!--on the other side of the world, in order
to sit on an antipodal cotton-bale?'"

"There is some more of India," said Bhima Gandharva gently. "Let us
look at it a little."

One may construct a good-enough outline map of this wonderful land in
one's mind by referring its main features to the first letter of the
alphabet. Take a capital A; turn it up side down; imagine that the
inverted triangle forming the lower half of the letter is the
Deccan, the left side representing the Western Ghauts, the right side
representing the Eastern Ghauts, and the cross-stroke standing for
the Vindhya Mountains; imagine further that a line from right to left
across the upper ends of the letter, trending upward as it is drawn,
represents the Himalaya, and that enclosed between them and the
Vindhyas is Hindustan proper. Behind--i.e. to the north of--the
centre of this last line rises the Indus, flowing first north-westward
through the Vale of Cashmere, then cutting sharply to the south and
flowing by the way of the Punjab and Scinde to where it empties at
Kurrachee. Near the same spot where the Indus originates rises also
the Brahmaputra, but the latter empties its waters far from the
former, flowing first south-eastward, then cutting southward and
emptying into the Gulf of Bengal. Fixing, now, in the mind the sacred