We were, at length, relieved from the violent and sickening heat, by a strong easterly breeze, bringing a mass of threatening clouds, which burst like a water-spout over the plains. In twenty-four hours, the cantonments and surrounding country were flooded, and the before arid plains now presented the appearance of an extensive lake. When the rains cease, and the clouds, rolling away, give place to the sun to look upon the waters, his influence soon dries a large portion of the soil, and the vapours which rise from the earth produce a damp heat, less endurable than the preceding dryness, and much more insalubrious.
After this change in the weather, I paid a visit to the Himalayah mountains, which lie about a hundred and ten miles north of Merut, and presented a most tantalizing sight during the hot season, rearing their snow-capped peaks at apparently so short a distance from the scorched and glistening plains of our present quarters.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Concha is a species of siliceous clay, lying in strata at a depth of from three to four feet beneath the surface of the whole alluvial plain of the Ganges.
[2] Pajamas are loose trousers.
[3] Julian, Ep. xliii. Gibbon, ii. 48.
[4] A havildar is the serjeant of a native regiment.
[5] Kanoge was built about 1000 years B.C., and was said to exceed 100 miles in circumference; it was besieged by Mahmoud of Ghuzni, and surrendered about A.D. 1020.—(R. Dow's Works.)
[6] Gharuwan—a bullock-driver.