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It is sometimes called the Gangetic crocodile, but it is even uglier than either crocodile or alligator, and differs from both in several important particulars. As, for instance, in its mouth its jaws being curiously straight, long, and narrow; and in the shape of its head, which has straight perpendicular sides, and a quadrilateral upper surface.
In a scientific point of view nothing has been done towards determining the levels of the land and waters of the great Gangetic delta, since Rennell's time, yet no geodetical operation promises more valuable results in geography and physical geology than running three lines of level across its area; from Chittagong to Calcutta, from Silhet to Rampore, and from Calcutta to Silhet.
Out of the primitive conditions of nomadic and pastoral life, under the leadership of tribal elders who were both priests and warriors, they gradually passed, after many vicissitudes of peace and war, into more settled forms of agricultural life and developed into distinct and separate polities of varying vitality, but still united by the bond of common religious and social institutions in the face of the indigenous populations whom they drove before them, or reduced into subjection and slowly assimilated as they moved down towards and into the Gangetic plain.
Every now and then, the paddles of the steamer tossed up the large fruits of Nipa fruticans, a low stemless palm that grows in the tidal waters of the Indian ocean, and bears a large head of nuts. Higher up, the river Hoogly is entered, and large trees, with villages and cultivation, replace the sandy spits and marshy jungles of the great Gangetic delta.
The voyage to the Andamans is characterized by fine weather enough; but from that onward we steam through a succession of heavy rain-storms; and down in the Strait of Malacca it can pour quite as heavily as on the Gangetic plains. At Penang it keeps up such an incessant downpour that the beauties of that lovely port are viewed only from beneath the ship's awning.
Fixing, now, in the mind the sacred Ganges and Jumna, coming down out of the Gangetic and Jumnatic peaks in a general south-easterly direction, uniting at Allahabad and emptying into the Bay of Bengal, and the Nerbudda River flowing over from the east to the west, along the southern bases of the Vindhyas, until it empties at the important city of Brooch, a short distance north of Bombay, one will have thus located a number of convenient points and lines sufficient for general references.
In the second century of our era Kanishka carried his victorious arms down to the Gangetic plain, where Buddhism still held its own in the region which had been its cradle; and, according to one tradition, he carried off from Pataliputra a famous Buddhist saint, who converted him to Buddhism.
It is curious that this rose, which is also a native of Birma and the Indian Peninsula, does not in this latitude grow west of the meridian of 87 degrees; it is confined to the upper Gangetic delta, and inhabits a climate in which it would least of all be looked for.
From Sikkim to the Khasia mountains our course was by boat down the Mahanuddy to the upper Gangetic delta, whose many branches we followed eastwards to the Megna; whence we ascended the Soormah to the Silhet district.
India only becomes historical with the establishment of the Sasunaga dynasty in the Gangetic kingdom of Magadha, which centred in what is now Behar, about the year 600 B.C.
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