CONDITIONS AFFECTING PRECIPITATION. 201 



bountifully watered by the rain brought from the Indian Ocean by the 

 southwest monsoons. It is the intense heat of summer acting on the vast 

 elevated mass of Central Asia which brings about this reversal of the trade- 

 winds. Let the temperature diminish, High Asia would be less heated than 

 at present, the force of the monsoons would be diminished, and the supply 

 of moisture to India would fall off in a corresponding ratio.* 



It may not be out of place here to introduce a few words in regard to 

 the climatic conditions prevailing over the region to the west of India, and 

 especially on the eastern and southern sides of the Mediterranean, to the 

 drying-up of which considerable space was devoted in the preceding chapter. 

 The question is. How does meteorological science account for the present 

 prevailing deficiency in tliat region of the moisture so necessaiy for vigorous 

 life and prosperity, no regard being had to past or future possible changes ? 



The opinions of meteorologists on this subject have not been entirely con- 

 cordant.! The essential fact is this : that the region in question is some- 



* Nothing was said in tlie previous pages in regard to tlie constant and apparently more frequent recurrence 

 of famines in India, occasioned by deficiency of rain, as an exemplification of the desiccation .so evidently going 

 on over the vast region adjacent on the north and northwest. A single quotation may, however, be given here, 

 as summing up the painful facts within the compass of a few lines. It is from Walford's Famines of the World : 

 Past and Present [Being Two Papers Read before the .Statistical Society of London in 1878 and 1S79 respectively, 

 and Reprinted from its Journal]. London, 1S79. That author writes as follows : " I have endeavored to make 

 my table of famines complete as to India in modern times. The first great famine there of which we have any 

 knowledge — many earlier ones of lesser magnitude liave occurred — was that of 1769-70, ' when the Govern- 

 ment did not attempt to cope with the disaster ; when the people died of starvation by hundreds of thousands ; 

 and a desolation spread over tlie country, the marks of which have not wholly ceased ' {Vide Col. George Clies- 

 ney, ' Indian Famines,' in [the magazine called the] 'Nineteenth Centurj',' [number for] November, 1S77). We 

 see in our table that it is estimated that three viiUions of the population then died of starvation, an estimate 

 I am not inclined to deem exaggerated ; and we are told that Bengal has been subjected to famines periodically 

 since — why since, as distinguisheil from previously, does not appear. [The reader will notice this last remark 

 of Mr. Walford, as indicating increasing desiccation in very recent historic times.] In 1799 there was again a 

 famine in Hindustan, and in 1S03. In 1810 there was a famine in the North-west Provinces, and from 2 to 8 

 percent of the population died, 90,0110 in one central district alone ! In 1813-14 Ilindostan again ; in 1832 

 ill Madras, when 200,000 perished in the district of Guntoor. In 1837 -38 in Northern India, 'the worst famine 

 of this century,' — but this was written before the more recent famines we now have to record. In 1861 famine 

 in North-west Provinces ; in 1S66, ' awful famine ' in Orissa, one million and a half, half the pojiulation of Lon- 

 don, reported to have perished. In 1874 the Bengal famine, which cost the Government Dl millions sterling for 

 an organized system of relief ; and lastly that of 1877, more terrilile perhaps than any during this centurs, over 

 which our Indian experience extends, and which it is estimated will cost in all nearly 10 millions sterling." 



+ Wojeikof, in his latest publication on the distribution of the rain-fail throughout the world (in the Zeit- 

 sehrift fur wissenschaftliche Geographic, Vol. I. [18S0] p. 193), thus explains the peculiarities of the climate of 

 the region bordering on the Mediterranean and of the Sahara : " The Sahara is for us the true type of a desert. It 

 has been often maintained that the cause of the scarcity of rain was to be sought for in the northeast winds blow- 

 ing from Cential Asia. This is an error. In the first place we find that south winds are rather common, in win- 

 ter, in Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, etc., in short in the whole region which separates Central Asia from the 



