Inland from Bombay is a large area with a rich black soil made of decayed lava. (Sec. 130.) Because of the climate of India,this lava plain becomes a land for cot ton, and India is second only to the United States as a cotton export er. The cot ton is shipped from Bombay, the chief trade center of the western part of the plateau, and from Madras, the trade center of the east coast.
Many peo ple on this plateau make their living by rais ing crops that require much labor, such as drying the fruits of the myrobalan tree to make tanning material, gathering gums from the trunks of forest trees to make varnish, and picking castor beans to make oil. Much castor oil is now used in airplane motors. Bombay has a great export of oil seeds.
696. Ceylon.—Ceylon differs from most parts of India in having heavy monsoon rains on one side and trade wind rains over on the other side when the monsoon is not blowing. The well-watered highlands of the interior are tilled by scientific farming on a large scale. The farming is managed by white men, but the work is done by dark skinned Ceylonese, and also by thousands of very black workers from southern India. Coffee was raised in Ceylon until blight killed the trees. Then tea was raised, but the crops were so large that the price went down. Rubber was tried next, and so much was raised that theprice for it, too, has gonedown.
On the coast lowlands of both Ceylon and the mainland of India are vast quantities of coconuts. They come to Europe and America as coconut oil, as dried meats (copra) ready for crushing, or as shredded coconut. Many steamships stop at Colombo on the voyage between Singapore and Europe and America.
697. Animals.—India, with its many kinds of climate, has a great variety of animals. In the dry parts of India the camel is used. In the wetter sections the water buffalo does the work, because he will work in the mud. Whenever the buffalo gets a chance, he will lie down in the mud and bury himself in it up to his eyes, in order to keep cool and escape the flies. Most of the plowing in India is done by zebus, a kind of cattle (Fig. 520). Can you tell why? (Sec. 527.) These animals are white, with large humps on their necks. In some places the ele phant plows and pulls wagons, but he is most useful at lifting heavy logs in lumber yards.
The Indian jungles have many wild animals, including the elephant and the tiger. The latter sometimes kills people. Thousands of people are killed each year by the cobra, the deadliest of the many poison ous snakes of India.
698. Trade of India.—The chief import of all India is cotton cloth, most of which comes from England. The United States supplies some iron, hardware, machinery, and petroleum. Ceylon is a heavy importer of rice, but in ordinary years, except for the import of sugar, the rest of India feeds herself. What are the exports? (Secs. 693 to 696.) 699. Future.—Agriculture, which is the occupation of most of the people of India, is of the intensive find, but there are still large stretches of forest and jungle where tigers and wild elephants live. This land may be made into fields. If the land is rough, it can grow various tree crops in which hot countries are already rich. Rubber, tea, coffee, coconut, nut-yielding palms, myro balans, and various spice trees are now used. There are also many others as yet but little used, which will yield large crops.
India might use much better methods of grow ing crops. On the Indus alone, five new irriga tion enterprises now planned will provide water for six million acres of rich desert land, an area as large as Mary land.
India is be ginning to manu facture. Native companies have built great stor age reservoirs in the Ghats Moun tains. These furnish water power at all sea sons for many cotton mills in Bombay. Ad ditional water power may be developed in the Ghats and also in the Himalayas, where streams come down thousands of feet from the plateaus of Tibet.
Although India is beginning to manu facture, it must be remembered that she is in the part of the world that be longs naturally in the zone for producing raw materials. India is hot. It is not so easy to work where it is hot as where it is cool. So the people do not do as many things as people in the stimulating climate of colder lands. (Secs. 207, 416.) One sea son the rice growers of a district in Ceylon had a crop big enough to last two seasons; so they did not plant rice the next season, but loafed the whole year and ate up what they had. In the third season the crop failed, and the people had to beg the gov ernment to save them from famine. In such a country one of the great problems of the government is to prevent famines. (Fig. 550.) Irrigation is helping to do this, and so are the railroads which carry food from regions of good crops to regions where crops have failed. India has many railroads, but theyareso far apart that she needs many more.
is ruled by the governor-general of India. Bur ma is larger than the whole United Kingdoni.
The French possessions in the eastern part of the region are larger than France and have nearly half as many people. Between the French and the English colonies is the inde pendent kingdom of Siam, from which both England and France have, from time to time, taken large slices of territory. Siam is, never theless, larger than the United Kingdom, with about as many people as Pennsylvania.
701. Climate, character, and trade.—The northern part of this region has many mountains, from which four big rivers flow down through wide, hot, tropic valleys, hav ing stretches of forest here and there. Like the Plateau of Hindustan, much of this region is grassland, for it has the same kind of rainfall as India. What is that? Much of the land, even in the valleys, is unused, and many strange ani mals are caught here for our zoological gardens. Most of the people live along the streams and especially on the deltas, where they can irri gate the land to grow rice, as the people do along the Ganges and the Yangtze.
This is an easy place in which to live. People do not need fire except for cooking. A grass house is warm enough. Little children go naked, and grown-ups need but few clothes. There are quantities of fish in the rivers. The warm weather makes food grow easily; so why work, or why worry? It is no wonder the people are not as industrious as they are in Scotland, or Sweden, or the United States.
The chief exports of this land of easy living are rice and teakwood. Teakwood is much used for the wooden parts of steel ships. These exports are of the kind that come from places with scanty population and plenty of resources. This