Following the Equator - Mark Twain

Following the Equator, Part 5, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens):

"Famine is India’s specialty. Elsewhere famines are inconsequential incidents—�in India they are devastating cataclysms; in one case they annihilate hundreds; in the other, millions.

India had 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.

With her everything is on a giant scale—�even her poverty; no other country can show anything to compare with it. And she has been used to wealth on so vast a scale that she has to shorten to single words the expressions describing great sums. She describes 100,000 with one word —�a ‘lahk’; she describes ten millions with one word—�a ‘crore’"