rests and prairies. Already does the flourishing
population of the great valley far exceed that of the thirteen United
States when first they declared their independence. Such is the state of
a continent where trees and stones are hurried annually by a thousand
torrents, from the mountains to the plains, and where sand and finer
matter are swept down by a vast current to the sea, together with the
wreck of countless forests and the bones of animals which perish in the
inundations. When these materials reach the gulf, they do not render the
waters unfit for aquatic animals; but on the contrary, the ocean here
swarms with life, as it generally does where the influx of a great river
furnishes a copious supply of organic and mineral matter. Yet many
geologists, when they behold the spoils of the land heaped in successive
strata, and blended confusedly with the remains of fishes, or
interspersed with broken shells and corals; when they see portions of
erect trunks of trees with their roots still retaining their natural
position, and one tier of these preserved in a fossil state above
another, imagine that they are viewing the signs of a turbulent instead
of a tranquil and settled state of the planet. They read in such
phenomena the proof of chaotic disorder and reiterated catastrophes,
instead of indications of a surface as habitable as the most delicious
and fertile districts now tenanted by man.

DELTA OF THE GANGES AND BRAHMAPOOTRA.

[Illustration: Fig. 25.

MAP OF THE DELTA OF THE GANGES AND BRAHMAPOOTRA.]

As an example of a still larger delta advancing upon the sea in
opposition to more powerful tides, I shall next describe that of the
Ganges and Brahmapootra (or Burrampooter). These, the two principal
rivers of India, descend from the highest mountains in the world, and
partially mingle their waters in the low plains of Hindostan, before
reaching the head of the Bay of Bengal. The Brahmapootra, somewhat the
larger of the two, formerly passed to the east of Dacca, even so lately
as the beginning of the present century, pouring most of its waters into
one of the numerous channels in the delta called "the Megna." By that
name the main stream was always spoken of by Rennell and others in their
memoirs on this region. But the main trunk now unites with an arm of the
Ganges considerably higher up, at a point about 100 miles distant from
the sea; and it is constantly, according to Dr. Hooker, working its way
westward,