RAVINES. 55 



sent impassable obstacles. * Also, in a country where 

 there is any fear of malaria, ample experience has 

 shown that these ravines act as a species of conduit 

 pipe, up which malaria is certain to travel; and that there 

 is no surer way of getting a smart attack of intermit- 

 tent fever than for travellers to encamp in one of 

 these situations. 



Natives, if left to themselves, are apt to select such 

 places as these for camping, because of their vicinity to 

 water, and because of the shelter which they afford 

 from the bitter night winds, which so often sweep over 

 the high plains above. The frequent occurrence of 

 dwarf trees and brushwood, so generally found grow- 

 ing on the steep banks of these gorges, which afford 

 a plentiful supply of firewood, is of course a further 

 source of attraction. 



These ravines almost always run up from the valleys 

 of the different plains rivers, until they reach the centre 

 of the table land which divides one watershed from 

 another gradually becoming smaller and shallower, 

 until at length they run out to nothing in the surface 

 of the plain at the point indicated, which for this reason 

 is known among plainsmen as the " divide." The 

 importance of these divides to travellers crossing 

 the high plains can hardly be overestimated; because 

 from possessing a generally fairly level surface, they 

 furnish a pass practicable for wheeled traffic, through 



* A typical instance of a " Ravine Country " occurs in India, between 

 Rawal-Pindi' and Jhelum, where a complete labyrinth of these channels, 

 all with precipitous banks of a deep-red colour, and varying from twenty 

 to fifty, or even sixty feet in depth, extend along the line of the N.W. 

 Railway for some forty miles. 



Another smaller, but somewhat similar country is to be seen a little to 

 the northward of Gwalior, on the section of the Midland Railway 

 between Agra and Gwalior. 



