2 j THE HIGHLANDS OF OENTEAL INDIA. 



would still be called mountains in any other country, the mass 

 of " ordinary readers " has no cognizance. 



Much of this has really been owing to the unexplored and 

 undescribed condition of such regions ; but something also to 

 the overwhelming prominence of the great northern range, 

 which rivets the attention of teachers of geography and their 

 pupils, and also, from the exigencies of the art of chartography, 

 renders it almost impossible to delineate on ordinary maps of 

 India the features of inferior ranges. 



Yet in the very centre of India there exists a considerable 

 region to which the term Highlands, which I have adopted for 

 a title, is strictly applicable ; and in which are numerous 

 peaks and ranges, for which the term " mountain" would, in any 

 other country, be used. Several of the great rivers of India 

 have their first sources in this elevated region, and pour their 

 waters into the sea on either side of the peninsula to the 

 north the Son commingling with the Ganges, to the east the 

 Mahanadi, flowing independently to the Bay of Bengal, to the 

 south some of the principal feeders of the Godavari, and to the 

 west the Narbadd and the Tapti, taking parallel courses to the 

 Arabian Gulf. If the reader will seek the head-waters of 

 these rivers on the map, he will find the region I am about to 

 describe. To be more precise, it lies on the 22nd parallel of 

 north latitude, and between the 76th and 82nd of east longi- 

 tude. It forms the central and culminating section of a ridge 

 of elevated country which stretches across the peninsula, from 

 near Calcutta to near Bombay, and separates Northern India, 

 or Hindostan proper, from the Deccan, or country of the 

 south. The traveller by the new Great Indian Peninsular 

 Eailway from Bombay to Calcutta, after some 275 miles of his 

 journey, will come to a point where the line branches into two. 

 The northern branch leads him on up the Narbada valley, 



