MIDDLE INDIA. 



161 



inhabitants, though its influence has wholly debased in them 

 the form, the size, and the strength of human creatures. 

 Here the disease named goitre prevails. From Rungpoor 

 towards Bootan it is estimated that every sixth man has a 

 crop or swelling. It occurs also in Lower Bootan ; but 

 Turner saw nothing of the kind in Thibet. The inhabitants 

 of Assam are visited w ith great goitres, and also the people 

 of the vallevs of Serinagur and those that dwell near the 

 open land of Kemaoon. This disease, conjoined with 

 cretinism, prevails throxighout the whole zone, from the 

 borders of Assam, in 27° north lat. and 110° east long., to 

 Hurdwar on the Ganges, in Rohilcund, in 30^ north lat. 

 and 78° east long., in those districts bounded on the south 

 hv Bijnee, Cooch-Bahar, Rungpoor, Dinagepoor, Purnca, 

 Tirhoot, Bettiah, and the northern boundary of Oude 

 through Gooracpore, Baraitsch, Pillibeat, and on the fron- 

 tier of Rohilcund, through Hurdwar. It extends farther to 

 the westward : Forster met vi-ith it on his mountain journey 

 from the Jamboo pass towards Cashmere. Appearances of 

 the same kind occur on the southern border of the Gobi 

 above Pekin, in the Kolla and Magaza in Africa, in the 

 marshy woods of Simbani, in the land of the Mandingoes, 

 in the southern acclivity of the Alps, &c., as well in those 

 places where snow-water is wanting as where it is met 

 with, — a fact in opposition to that opinion which ascribes 

 the goitre disease to the bad qualities of the snow-water. 



^? Middle India.— TYas great comparatively flat region, 

 the richest and most productive part of our eastern empire, 

 comprehends, 1. The great tract watered by the Ganges. 

 2. The tract watered by the Indus. 3. The intermediate 

 desert. 



As this division of India is noticed in a preceding volume 

 of this work we need not enter into further details, but 

 merely remark that the alluj'ial tract from Hurdwar to the 

 mouth of the Ganges may, ^cording to Hindoo speculators, 

 formerly have been occupied by the sea, — thus giving to 

 the peninsular part of India an insular form ; and that the 

 desert, which in many of its characters resembles strongly 

 tke African and Arabian sandy plains, is the eastern por 

 tion of the vast series of deserts which stretch from the 

 western boundary of the great Sahara m Africa across the 



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