63 were Baptists, 155,455 Lutherans, 53,829 Presbyterians
and 157,847 put themselves down as Protestants without giving
the sect to which they adhere.
The foreign population of India is very small. The British-born
number only 96,653; 104,583 were born on the continent of Europe,
and only 641,854 out of nearly 300,000,000 were born outside
the boundaries of India.
India consists of four separate and well-defined regions: the
jungles of the coast and the vast tract of country known as the
Deccan, which make up the southern half of the Empire; the great
plain which stretches southward from the Himalayas and constitutes
what was formerly known as Hindustan; and a three-sided tableland
which lies between, in the center of the empire, and is drained
by a thousand rivers, which carry the water off as fast as it
falls and leave but little to refresh the earth. This is the
scene of periodical famine, but the government is pushing the
irrigation system so rapidly that before many years the danger
from that source will be much diminished.
The whole of southern India, according to the geologists, was once
covered by a great forest, and indeed there are still 66,305,506
acres in trees which are carefully protected. The black soil of
that region is proverbial for its fertility and produces cotton,
sugar cane, rice and other tropical and semi-tropical plants with
an abundance surpassed by no other region. The fruit-bearing
palms require a chapter to themselves in the botanies, and are a
source of surprising wealth. According to the latest census the
enormous area of 546,224,964 acres is under cultivation, which
is an average of nearly two acres per capita of population, and
probably two-thirds of it is actually cropped. About one-fourth
of this area is under irrigation and more than 22,000,000 acres
produce two crops a year.
Most of the population is scattered in villages, and the number
of people who are not supported by farms is much smaller than would
be supposed from the figures of the census. A large proportion of
the inhabitants returned as engaged in trade and other employments
really belong to the agricultural community, because they are the
agents of middlemen through whose hands the produce of the farms
passes. These people live in villages among the farming community.
In all the Empire there are only eight towns with more than 200,000
inhabitants; only three with more than 500,000, and only one with
a million, w
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