MUD. 137 



separated from the continent of Asia by a broad arm of 

 the sea which occupied what is now the great plain of 

 Bengal, the North- West, and the Punjaub. This ancient 

 sea washed the foot of the Himalayas, and spread south 

 thence for 600 miles to the base of the Vindhyas. But 

 the Himalayas are high and clad with gigantic glaciers. 

 Much ice grinds much mud on those snow-capped 

 summits. The rivers that flowed from the Eoof of the 

 World carried down vast sheets of alluvium, which 

 formed fans at their mouths, like the cones still de- 

 posited on a far smaller scale in the Lake of Geneva by 

 little lateral torrents. Gradually the silt thus brought 

 down accumulated on either side, till the rivers ran 

 together into two great systems one westward the 

 Indus, with its four great tributaries, Jhelum, Chenab, 

 Eavee, Sutlej ; one eastward, the Ganges, reinforced 

 lower down by the sister streams of the Jumna and the 

 Brahmapootra. The colossal accumulation of silt thus 

 produced filled up at last all the great arm of the sea 

 between the two mountain chains, and joined the 

 Deccan by slow degrees to the continent of Asia. It is 

 still engaged in filling up the Bay of Bengal on one side 

 by the detritus of the Ganges, and the Arabian Sea on 

 the other by the sand-banks of the Indus. 



In the same way, no doubt, the silt of the Thames, 

 the Humber, the Rhine, and the Meuse tend slowly (bar 

 accidents) to fill up the North Sea, and anticipate Sir 

 Edward Watkin by throwing a land bridge across the 

 English Channel. If ever that should happen, then 

 history will have repeated itself, for it is just so that 

 the Deccan was joined to the mainland of Asia. 



One question more. Whence comes the mud? The 



