THE NORTHEERN PLAINS 
village folk gather in the cool of the evening to gossip and discuss tho food prices of 
the nearest bazaar. Stretching from village to village, and linking together the 
tountry communities, runs the great white road, with long avenues of trees giving 
welcome shade to the creaking bullock-carts, and to the white dust-powdered figure 
of the wayfarer. Beyond the road and the villages, reaching to the level horizon, 
are the fields of the peasants, ripe with harvests of millet, sugar, wheat, or Indian 
corn in the autumn, or stretching away empty in brown folds under the yellow 
heat haze of early summer. This is what may be seen over thousands of 
square miles through a great space of North India.’ —$Sır T. HoLDIcH. 
“A constant succession of pictures is afforded by the reaches of the river, busy 
with traffic ; the boats with their great sails ; the coco-nuts and other palms, huge 
figs, tamarinds and mangoes, bamboos anl plantains ; the villages with tanks green 
with slime and water-lilies ; the delicate forms of men and women in scanty but 
graceful c-stume-—these, and a thousand picturesque details, make Bengal one of 
the most beautiful countries in Ind a.’-—Sır JOHN STRACHEY. 
The plain of the Indus is separated from that of the Ganges by a 
slightly elevated tract of land that rises in the south to the Aravallıi Hills. 
Both plains are remarkable for their flat, monotonous aspects and the 
fine nature of the alluvial deposits of which they are composed. It is 
rare that even a pebble of any size is found on these plains. 
Climate.—The temperature is high, especially in late spring and 
summer, and the diurnal and seasonal range is great. In the ‘cool 
season ’—4.e., from November to February—the climate is healthy and 
pleasant. The winds are deflected from their natural directions by the 
trend of the Ganges Valley, which acts as a sort of flue. In winter, 
when the north-east trade-wind prevails over the peninsula and Indian 
Ocean, a north-west wind sweeps across the Punjab and brings it a slight 
rainfall. In summer, when the south-west Monsoon prevails over the 
Deccan, a southerly moisture-laden wind crosses the Bay of Bengal, and 
turns as a south-east wind up the Ganges Valley (see pp. 22 and 23, and 
maps on pp. 20, 21, and 25). This wind is cooled as it rises in front of the 
mountains of Assam and the Himalayas, and a copious rainfall results 
on the mountain slopes and over the Lower Ganges basin. As the wind 
travels westward, the rainfall diminishes, and is scanty in the Punjab. 
As the south-west Monsoon does not blow strongly north of the peninsula 
of Gujarat, the Indus basin is deficient in rainfall, and irrigation is 
necessary for cultivation, 
The importance of the northern plains is mainly due to the great 
rivers—the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra-—-that supply them with 
soil, water, and means of transport.