They had made landfall at the port of Surat, which was at the mouth of the river Tapti, and since then had been heading north, following a caravan-road that ran parallel to the sea-coast, a few miles inland. From time to time they would cross some smaller stream that, like the Tapti, meandered down out of the country to their right on its way to the Gulf of Cambaye, to their left. All knew that the biggest such river was called the Narmada and that they would come to it today, but so flat was the landscape that it afforded no hints as to how near or far the great river might be. This coastal plain reminded Jack a little bit of the Nile Delta, which was to say that it was well-watered, populated with many villages, and presented to the traveler a mixed prospect of marshes, farms, and groves of diverse kinds of trees that were cultivated (or at least allowed to stay alive) because they provided fruit or oil or fiber. "We shall see wilder and stranger landscapes farther north," Surendranath promised them, "but by then we shall be out of danger.