240 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



sufficient water to convert the whole of the plain with- 

 out into an evergreen garden. Such sites as these, 

 though not always so favoured by a combination of 

 circumstances as this one, are met with at intervals 

 along almost the whole of the frontier line between the 

 highlands and the open plain. But, alas ! the means at 

 the command of so poor a country as India are unequal 

 to tlie task of realising her own future ; and the wealth 

 of life-giving water that annually escapes through these 

 unguarded outlets must still, for many a generation, it 

 may be feared, be allowed to waste itself in destructive 

 inundations and fruitless floods. We are only just 

 beginnins: to realise that at the bottom of all India's 

 wretched poverty and backwardness lies the exceeding 

 unfertility of her land in the absence of artificial irriga- 

 tion. What might be the changes in the physical 

 conditions and economy of India were the annual rain- 

 fall saved which now escapes to the sea, it is impossible 

 to foresee. An almost incredible increase in the pro- 

 ductiveness of the low country, and the final banish- 

 ment of the famine demon, would probably be combined 

 with a great amelioration of the climate, and improve- 

 ment of the forests of the hiofher regions. 



Gharri is situated on the edo^e of a table-land of con- 

 siderable extent, but of very irregular outline ; on the 

 north winding round the head of long ravines which 

 drain down into the valley below, and towards the south 

 coming suddenly to a steep drop into the plains of 

 Berar. The more open parts of this table-land have at 

 some remote period been cultivated, the trap boulders 

 having been cleared off and piled into rough walls 

 enclosing large square fields. The land is in many 

 places very deep and rich, and, the elevation being 



