00, and heads an army of 242,000 men--77,000 British and
165,000 native troops.

The lieutenant-governor of Bengal, always spoken of as the "L. G."
resides in Calcutta and works in close relationship with the viceroy.
This British functionary administers the affairs of a territory but one
twentieth the area of the United States, but which possesses 75,000,000
people.

And what is this India, governed by Great Britain through its delegated
officials? It is a country greater than all Europe, omitting Russia, and
fully half as large as the United States. Its population numbers
300,000,000, and is the most heterogeneous of any land in the
world--were there homogeneity, or anything approaching it, a mere
handful of Britons could not hope to control a fifth part of the people
of the earth. India is made up of a multiplicity of races and tribes,
professing every religion of paganism; and these are separated by
thousands upon thousands of castes each going its own distinct and
peculiar way. Great Britain's control of these teeming millions is
unique in the history of oversea rule. India is almost exclusively
agricultural, and in sections of Bengal averages 900 people to the
square mile. At the beginning of 1906 the government had brought
14,000,000 acres of waste land under cultivation by irrigation upon an
expenditure of $135,000,000. India now has 215 cotton mills, which
employ a capital of $70,000,000, and last year's jute product of Bengal
alone was valued at $70,000,000. The Indian Empire is ponderous and
complex from any point of view. Possessing but half the area of the
United States, it represents one seventh of the British Empire, and more
than seven times the combined population of Great Britain and Ireland.
It should not be assumed that the whole of India is under British rule,
for practically a third of the country is still governed by independent
native princes. With almost four times the population of the United
States, India supports less than 29,000 miles of railway, as against
215,000 miles in the great republic--and this difference makes the
contrast between Asiatic conservatism and New World progress.

[Illustration: CALCUTTA COOLIES]

The person demanding physical statistics gets enough pabulum in a day's
search to keep the machinery of the mind going for months, and must be
amazed when learning that there are seven hundred and twenty-one
distinct languages and dialects spoken in India; that the populati