Uttarakhand 207
fivers flowing down from the mountains pursues its wide and
•sandy course. The numerous shapely cut ravines, however, show
-that in the rainy season there are many fierce torrents, and these
gullies reveal the fact that the ground consists of a vast collection
of loose boulders, with a thin deposit of earth on the top, sufficient,
however, to support a great growth of forest trees. Bhabar is
still, mostly a dry belt of land which swallows up all the minor
streams coming down from the mountains and give back none of
its waters until the Terai is reached. Human art and industry,
however, have been at work to remedy this condition, and we
find, from earlier reports and descriptions of the country, that it
was the custom of the people to harvest several of the mountain
streams and distribute them canalwise over the Bhabar. This was
-done on a much larger scale by the government in the days of
Sir Henry Ramsay, when the surplus waters of the Bhimtal, and
other lakes were conducted by dams and sluices to the level below
and so the Bhabar has been to a great extent cleared and
•cultivated. A large number of Kumaonese, Punjabi refugees and
•ex-army personel have settled in Bhabar and Terai and still many
of the Kumaonese spend the old tradition of spending the winter
•season in Bhabar with their livestock, and there they till their
well demarcated fields and fodder their cattle on the abundant
.herbage, at a time when all is dry and perched in the hilly tracts.
Today Terai holds the hopes of future agricultural revolution.