(    3    )
river beds  are  altogether inadequate to carry off the flood.    Thus, while the
Mahanadi alone pours down 1,800,000 cubic feet per second  in the height  of
the rains, the whole of its distributaries in the Orissa delta can only  discharge
897,449 cubic feet per second.    It follows, therefore, that only one half of the
waters thus brought down find an outlet through the deltaic distributaries to
the sea.    The other half bursts over the banks, and sweeps across the  country.
"The Mahanadi," as pointed out by Dr.   Hunter in  his   Orissa,   "illustrates
in  a striking manner  the biography of a  great Indian river."    Rising in
Central India, 520 miles off, it collects the rainfall of 45,000  square  miles,
and  pours  down  on  the  Orissa delta through  a narrow  gorge just above
Cuttack city.    In its first stage it runs on a lower level than the surrounding
country, winding  through mountain passes and skirting the base of the  hills.
During this long part of its career it receives innumerable tributaries from the
higher country on both banks.  So far it answers to our common English idea of
a river.   But no sooner does it reach the  delta than its  whole life changes.
Instead of running along the lowest ground, it finds itself hoisted upon its own
deposits of silt, its banks gradually forming ridges, which rise above the adjacent
country.    Instead of receiving affluents, it shoots forth distributaries.    The silt
gradually accumlates in the bed and on its margins, until its channel shallows
and its capacity as an outlet for  the waters  which  pour  into  it from above
diminishes.   The same process goes on in every one of the hundred distributaries
into which the parent stream breaks up;  and as the beds grow more shallow,
their total discharging power becomes less and less adequate to carry off the
water-supply to the  sea.    As  the  rivers  in the  delta thus  gradually   build
themselves up   into   high-level   canals  so  the  lowest levels lie about half
way between each set  of their distributaries.    The  country,  in fact, slopes
gently  downward from the river banks, and in time of flood   the overflow
is  unable to make its way back  again  into the  river.    The waters stand
deep  upon the harvest fields long  after  the main channels have run down.
They   slowly   search    out   the lines   of   drainage,    accumulating   in   stag-
nant  swamps,   drowning the   crops,   and  poisoning  the  air  with malaria,
until they dry up, or at last reach the sea.  Even  in periods   of quiescence
the rivers form a  complicated net-work of channels,   which crawl  eastward
by  innumerable  bifurcations, interlacings,   and  temporary  rejunctions  and
divergencies,"    Besides the copious water-supply, Orissa  has  a local rainfall
of 621/2 inches  per   annum.    Nevertheless,   the  uncontrolled  state    of   the
water-supply has subjected the country from time immemorial to  droughts no
less than to inundations.
The tributary hill states of Orissa, 19 in number, which form the
mountainous back ground of this division of the Bengal Province, occupy a
succession of ranges rolling backwards towards Central India. They furnish
no cholora statistics, and therefore require no description here.
B 2