------------------------------------------------------------------------ LECTURE VII. --- =DELHI.= --- THE MUHAMMADAN RELIGION. LIST OF THE MOGUL EMPERORS FROM HUMAYUN TO AURANGZEB. HUMAYUN 1530-1540 1555-1556 AKBAR 1556-1605 JEHANGIR 1605-1627 SHAH JAHAN 1627-1658 AURANGZEB 1658-1707 ---------------------------- [Sidenote: 1. Map of Northern India.] Once more we look at the map of Northern India. We realise the great mountain wall of the Himalayas, four and five miles high, curving through fifteen hundred miles along the northeast frontier of the Indian lowland. Behind the Himalayas is the Tibetan plateau, three miles in average elevation. Northwestward of India there is another plateau, but a lower one than Tibet, and the mountain ranges which divide it from the Indian plain are lower than the Himalayas. Observe the great series of streams which emerge from the Himalayas, and gather on the one hand into the Indus River, flowing southwestward, and on the other hand into the Ganges, flowing southeastward. See the position of the Indian desert and the Aravalli Hills, and note the exact spot where stands the city of Delhi. [Sidenote: 2. Map of the neighborhood of Delhi.] We turn now to a map on a larger scale of the region round Delhi. We see the Himalaya mountains, the Aravalli hills, and the Indian Desert. We see the streams of the Indus and Ganges systems turning away from one another, and we see Simla, the summer capital of India, high on a spur of the Himalayas, above the divide between the Indus and the Ganges tributaries. Just north of Simla is the valley of the Sutlej, tributary to the Indus, and where the Sutlej issues from the mountains we note the off-take of a great system of irrigation canals. It is true that the lowland northwestward of Delhi is not quite desert. Nevertheless it has but a sparse rainfall, and the result of the construction of the irrigation canals derived from the Himalayan waters is that great colonies have been established in this region, and wheat is grown on thousands of square miles that were formerly waste. India has a great population, but with modern methods of water supply, and more advanced methods of cultivation, there is still ample room for settlement within its boundaries. We see on the map that there are other irrigation canals derived from the Ganges where it emerges from the mountains at Hardwar, and from the Jumna.