General Notes 613 



being agreed) because we are told 1 that the 

 climatic conditions of India are unique among 

 those of the great countries. The reason for 

 this can be spelt in seven letters, namely by 

 the word " monsoon." In India we have a 

 tract of country as vast as a continent, inhab- 

 ited by 316,000,000 industrious but compara- 

 tively poor folk, whose support is dependent 

 mainly upon the industry of agriculture. It 

 is stated that the prosperity of no less than 

 seven-eighths of this vast population hangs 

 more or less upon whether the seasonal harvest 

 be favourable or not. By one of the most 

 stupendous miracles of Nature, the source of 

 the rairiy weather is derived from the heart of 

 Africa. The peasant of India owes his very 

 existence to rain clouds called into being in 

 the former country, and despatched thence on 

 their beneficent mission to discharge moisture 

 for the fertilization of Indian crops. Sweeping 

 across divided seas, and up either flank of 

 India to the head of the Persian Gulf on the 

 one hand and the Bay of Bengal on the other, 

 the monsoon holds in the hollow of its hand 

 the life or death of no small proportion of 

 India's many inhabitants. Rain too little or 

 too heavy, or at the wrong period, can turn 

 and often in past history has turned plenty 

 into dearth, health into pestilence, and a com- 

 fortable subsistence into fierce famine. 



1 See London Daily Telegraph of November 20, 1913, 

 p. 3, column i. First notice on the "Report of the 

 Royal Commission on Indian Finance." 



