Wind N.E. to N.W.
Temperature, 24 hours:
Mean greatest 87.7°
Mean least 73.1°
Rain (inches) 2.1
March.—In March the heat continues to increase, the earth receiving more warmth than it radiates or parts with by evaporation. The day becomes oppressive, the nights unrefreshing, the grass is withered and brown, the earth hard and cleft, the lakes shrunk to shallows, and the rivers evaporated to dryness. Europeans now escape from the low country, and betake themselves to the shade of the forests adjoining the coffee-plantations in the hills; or to the still higher sanatarium of Neuera-ellia, nearly the loftiest plateau in the mountains of the Kandyan range. The winds, when any are perceptible, are faint and unsteady with a still increasing westerly tendency, partial showers sometimes fall, and thunder begins to mutter towards sunset. At the close of the month, the mean temperature will be found to have advanced about a degree, but the sensible temperature and the force of the sun's rays are felt in a still more perceptible proportion.
Wind N.W. to S.W.
Temperature, 24 hours:
Mean greatest 88.7°
Mean least 73.6°
Rain (inches) 7.4
April is by far the most oppressive portion of the year for those who remain at the sea-level of the island. The temperature continues to rise as the sun in his northern progress passes vertically over the island. A mirage fills the hollows with mimic water; the heat in close apartments becomes extreme, and every living creature flies to the shade from the suffocating glare of mid-day. At length the sea exhibits symptoms of an approaching change, a ground swell sets in from the west, and the breeze towards sunset brings clouds and grateful showers. At the end of the month the mean temperature attains its greatest height during the year, being about 83° in the day, and 10° lower at night.
Wind N.W. to S.W.
Temperature, 24 hours:
Mean greatest 87.2°
Mean least 72.9°
Rain (inches) 13.3
May is signalised by the great event of the change of the monsoon, and all the grand phenomena which accompany its approach.
It is difficult for any one who has not resided in the tropics to comprehend the feeling of enjoyment which accompanies these periodical commotions of the atmosphere; in Europe they would be fraught with annoyance, but in Ceylon they are welcomed with a relish proportionate to the monotony they dispel.
Long before the wished-for period arrives, the verdure produced by the previous rains becomes almost obliterated by the burning droughts of March and April. The deciduous trees shed their foliage, the plants cease to put forth fresh leaves, and all vegetable life languishes under the unwholesome heat. The grass withers on the baked and cloven earth, and red dust settles on the branches and thirsty brushwood. The insects, deprived of their accustomed food, disappear underground or hide beneath the decaying bark; the water-beetles bury themselves in the hardened mud of the pools, and the helices retire into the crevices of the stones or the hollows amongst the roots of the trees, closing the apertures of their shells with the hybernating epiphragm. Butterflies are no longer seen hovering over the flowers, the birds appear fewer and less joyous, and the wild animals and crocodiles, driven by the drought from their accustomed retreats, wander through the jungle, and even venture to approach the village wells in search of water. Man equally languishes under the general exhaustion, ordinary exertion becomes distasteful, and the native Singhalese, although inured to the climate, move with lassitude and reluctance.
Meanwhile the air becomes loaded to saturation with aqueous vapour drawn up by the augmented force of evaporation acting vigorously over land and sea: the sky, instead of its brilliant blue, assumes the sullen tint of lead, and not a breath disturbs the motionless rest of the clouds that hang on the lower range of hills. At length, generally about the middle of the month, but frequently earlier, the sultry suspense is broken by the arrival of the wished-for change. The sun has by this time nearly attained his greatest northern declination, and created a torrid heat throughout the lands of southern Asia and the peninsula of India. The air, lightened by its high temperature and such watery vapour as it may contain, rises into loftier regions and is replaced by indraughts from the neighbouring sea, and thus a tendency is gradually given to the formation of a current bringing up from the south the warm humid air of the equator. The wind, therefore, which reaches Ceylon comes laden with moisture, taken up in its passage across the great Indian Ocean. As the monsoon draws near, the days become more overcast and hot, banks of clouds rise over the ocean to the west, and in the peculiar twilight the eye is attracted by the unusual whiteness of the sea-birds that sweep along the strand to seize the objects flung on shore by the rising surf.
At last the sudden lightnings flash among the hills and sheet through the clouds that overhang the sea[1], and with a crash of thunder the monsoon bursts over the thirsty land, not in showers or partial torrents, but in a wide deluge, that in the course of a few hours overtops the river banks and spreads in inundations over every level plain.