CHAPTER X. 



AN EXPLOEATION IN THE FAR EAST. 



The Highlands of Central India may perhaps properly 

 bo said to terminate where the steep southern face of 

 the Mykal range, trending away to the north-east, 

 culminates in the high bluff promontory of Amarkantak. 

 Standing here on this prominent point, the very focus 

 and navel of India, the eye ranges over a panorama 

 perhaps inferior in extent to no outlook in the whole 

 peninsula. The rain that clothes this little plateau of a 

 few square miles with the greenest of verdure, having 

 the peculiarity of seldom ceasing for more than a few- 

 days at any part of the year, forms the first beginnings 

 of three great rivers, whose waters flow in opposite 

 directions to the seas on either side of India. The 

 infant Narbada bubliles forth at the feet of the observer, 

 enclosed Ijy religious care in a wall of masonry, and 

 surrounded by Hindii temples, and thence meanders on 

 for some miles through a narrow glade, carpeted with 

 beautiful grass, and fringed by forests of sal ; at first a 

 tiny burn, but growing rapidly by union with others^ 

 till, some three miles from the fountain, it leaps over 

 the edge of the plateau in a clear shoot of about thirty 

 feet. Seven hundred and fifty miles further on it rolls, 

 a mighty river, into the waters of the Arabian Gulf. In 



