Vol. XL, No. 5 



WASHINGTON 



November, 1921 



THE 



NATDONAL 

 GE©<GMAPMHG 



COPYRIGHT. 1 92 1. BY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY. WASHINGTON. D. C. 



THROUGH THE HEART OF HINDUSTAN 



A Teeming Highway Extending for Fifteen Hundred 

 Miles, from the Khyber Pass to Calcutta 



By Maynard Owen Williams 



Author of "Russia's Orphan Races," "Czechoslovakia, Keyland op Central Europe," "Adventures 

 with a Camera in Many Lands," etc. 



THERE is nothing provincial about 

 India's Main Street. Starting at 

 the Khyber Pass, where the Af- 

 ghan caravans weave a tenuous thread of 

 trade between the frontier hills, it runs 

 to Calcutta, where a goodly share of the 

 world's shipping is idly swinging to the 

 tides of the treacherous Hooghly.* 



The railways which parallel its more 

 than 1,500 miles, as they parallel many of 

 our own best highways, have diverted 

 much traffic from the open road and 

 cooped it up like crated fowls in third- 

 class cars. But the bullock-cart still rolls 

 on and the motor-car has made its pres- 

 ence smelt from the northwest frontier 

 province to Bengal. 



The "broad road" of Kipling's lama 

 and his adventurous chela, Kim, runs 

 through one of the most thickly populated 

 regions in the world. It is a plain road 

 from beginning to end. From the mud 

 fort of Jamrud to the docks at Kidder- 

 pore, this highway is a low way. It 

 passes over the watershed between the 

 Indus and the Ganges at an altitude of 

 less than a thousand feet, and thence 

 runs along with the Jumna or the Ganges 

 to the alluvial delta in the midst of which 

 Calcutta proudly reigns as queen. 



* For a map of India, see "The Map of Asia" 

 (size, 28x36 inches), issued as a supplement 

 with The Geographic for May, 1921. 



To the left, throughout the length of 

 the road, are the eternal hills, beyond 

 which the snow wall of the world's 

 mightiest mountains can sometimes be 

 seen. To the right is the jumble of low 

 hills which bear various names, but which, 

 if the peninsula of India were slightly 

 lowered, would form the irregular north- 

 ern base of an arrow-shaped island, with 

 its point at Cape Comorin, opposite 

 Ceylon. 



THROUGH A REGION 01? RIVERS 



Although Main Street runs through a 

 region of rivers, let us not think of it as 

 a garden land ; for during much of the 

 year it is dusty and dry and at no time 

 does it have the lush loveliness which 

 dots the hot southland with scenes of re- 

 freshing beauty. Throughout most of its 

 length, irrigation has been developed to a 

 high degree, and the farmer buys his 

 water as he buys his soil. 



From the arid furnace of Ali Masjid, 

 in the Khyber, to the steamy Sundarbans, 

 this road is deadly hot at times; yet ice 

 formed in my tent-room in Lahore, and 

 along the watershed between India's two 

 most famous rivers the nights in winter 

 can be bitter cold, even for those Mon- 

 golian peoples whose heavy costumes re- 

 mind one of the Himalayan snows, 

 whence thev come. 



