CONSERVATORS’ WORK 145 
ways more difficult are adopted that prove success- 
ful only after many assaults and many losses. But 
ultimately they take possession, to hold the con- 
quered province, perhaps, for several lengthy genera- 
tions, while they look down on the river, now many 
feet below, and watch new territory being built up 
for their successors, or maybe the crumbling away 
of the banks on which their ancestors have stood. 
But the hills cannot dwindle and subside without 
leaving some mark in the plains below; their con- 
figuration may not, indeed, be altered perceptibly 
during the life of a man, yet even during his short 
term he cannot fail to observe how Nature disposes 
of the débris of their crumbling. Whether he stands 
at the foot of the Himalaya or in the deltas of the 
waterways 1,000 miles away, he cannot remain 
ignorant of either the levelling up that is daily pro- 
gressing, or, once his eyes are opened, to the part 
that the forest plays in the stupendous work that is 
proceeding. Just as in the sub-Himalayan tracts 
of Northern India the rapid torrents deal with the 
boulders and sand on the steeper slopes, so in the 
thousands of square miles comprised in the delta of 
‘the Ganges there is a similar force at work to deal 
with the finer earth that has succeeded in completing 
the long journey from mountain to sea. 
Imagine the south-west monsoon hurling the 
waters of the Bay of Bengal against the land 
relentlessly for many months of the year, and 
defeating its own fury by the sand it throws up 
just above high-water mark. At once the forest 
takes possession, and forms a dam of living fascines, 
a barrier to further progress. Yet in this embank- 
10 
