Читать книгу Eight Lectures on India онлайн

5 страница из 25

From Cape Comorin two coasts diverge, the one known as the Malabar Coast northwestward for a thousand miles, the other known as the Coromandel Coast northward and then northeastward for a like distance. The surf of the Arabian Sea beats on the Malabar Coast, that of the Bay of Bengal on the Coromandel Coast. Both the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal open broadly southward to the Indian Ocean, for the great Indian Peninsula narrows between them to a sharp point at Cape Comorin.

|3.

Map of Southern India.| The interior of the Indian Peninsula is for the most part a low plateau, known as the Deccan, whose western margin forms a steep brink overlooking the Malabar Coast. From the top of this brink, called the Western Ghats, the surface of the plateau falls gently eastward to a second lower brink, which bears the name of Eastern Ghats. Between the Eastern Ghats, however, and the Coromandel Coast there is a broad belt of low-lying plain, the Carnatic. Thus India presents a lofty front to the ship approaching from the west, but a featureless plain along the Bay of Bengal, where the trees of the coastline appear to rise out of a water-horizon when seen from a short distance seaward.