THE SOUTHERN TABLE-LAND.

67

excellent timber throughout the river plains of Northern India and on their hilly outskirts. Flowering creepers, ofgigantic size and gorgeous colours, festoon the jungle; whileeach tank bears its own beautiful crop of the lotus and water-lily. Nearly every vegetable product which feeds and clothesa people, or enables it to trade with foreign countries, aboundson the northern river plains.

Having described the leading features of the Himalayas on Thirdthe north, and of the great river plains at their base, we comenow to the third division of India , namely, the three-sided Thetable-land which covers the southern half or more strictlypeninsular portion of India . This tract, known in ancient i anc i_times as the Deccan (Dakshin), literally The South , comprises,in its widest historical application, the Central Provinces,

Berar, Madras, Bombay, Mysore , with the Native Terri-tories of the Nizam, Sindhia, Holkar , and other Feudatorychiefs. It had in 1891 an aggregate population of about 115millions. For the sake of easy remembrance, therefore, wemay take the inhabitants of the river plains and their outskirtsin the north at about 165 millions, and the inhabitants of thesouthern table-land at 115 millions.

The Deccan, in its local acceptation, is restricted to the Thehigh inland tract between the Narbada (Nerbudda) and the Deccan;Kistna rivers ; but the term is also loosely used to include thewhole country south of the Vindhyas as far as Cape Comorin .

Taken in this wide sense, it slopes up from the southern edgeof the Gangetic plains. Three ranges of hills support its its threenorthern, its eastern, and its western sides, the two latter supportingmeeting at a sharp angle near Cape Comorin . wal™ 11 *™

The northern side is buttressed by confused ranges, with a Thegeneral direction of east to west, popularly known in the Vindhyaaggregate as the Vindhya mountains. The Vindhyas , however,are made up of several distinct hill systems. Two sacredpeaks stand as outposts in the extreme east and west, with asuccession rather than a series of ranges stretching 800 milesbetween. At the western extremity, Mount Abu , famous forits exquisite Jain temples, rises, as a solitary outlier of theAravalli hills, 5653 feet above the Rajputana plains, like anisland out of the sea. Beyond the southern limits of that theirplain, the Vindhya range of modern geography runs almost vanousdue east from Gujarat , forming the northern wall of the Nar - ranges ’bada valley. The Satpura mountains stretch, also east andwest, to the south of the Narbada river, and form the water-