UPPER INDIA. 51 



rid of " hurtful or excessive moisture." If the moisture is 

 "hurtful or excessive" on the high lands, it will be much 

 more so on the low lands. 



What is surface- drainage but increasing the pollution of the 

 rivers, and as they fall into the Ganges, making it a main 

 sewer. In the floods, the sewage-matter of the drainage 

 basin of the Ganges is deposited on Bengal, and this is suffi- 

 cient to account for the present unhealthy state of the country 

 increased floods and an increased amount of filth brought 

 down by the floods; both the floods and the filth being the 

 results of the so-called improved surface-drainage. It appears 

 as if the ' c rights and feelings " of Bengal are not much con- 

 sidered by his neighbours in Upper India.*" In the same way 

 that the accumulation of water in the bed of a jheel, and its 

 extending over the neighbouring low land in the rains, can 

 be prevented, and its bed kept from drying up in the hot 

 weather, so also can floods in rivers during the rains be pre- 

 vented, and greater depth of water kept up in them during 

 the dry seasons of the year, and that way is by retaining the 

 rain-water in the soil on which it fell, preventing its escape 

 by surface-drainage, and permitting it only to find its way to 

 lower land and streams, filtered by percolation (natural subsoil 

 drainage) through the soil. The rivers would remain at a 

 more equable depth throughout the year, which would greatly 

 facilitate their navigation, and many of the smaller streams, 

 only occasionally used for navigation during the rains, would 

 be navigable throughout the year. 



The Ganges and Jumna rise in the Himalayas, and after a 

 comparatively short course in the hills, enter the plains, flow 

 separately to Allahabad, where they join, and then run to the sea. 



The volume of water of these rivers and their tributaries 

 where they issue from the hills, is a mere fraction of the 

 * See Appendix B, p. 101. 

 E 2 



