Morning journal and courier., 1891-10-26

of painted wood, There is no sound of life anywhere; the noisy, green parrots are silent. and hide from the sun in the herrt of the densest and leafess top.
 You may, perhaps, see crow or mynah sit solitarily on bough, with dropping wing and gaping beak, helpless in this great purgatory of fire. "The monsoon, the monsoon-will it never comet" you ask as you toss half naked on your bed, wor- ried by prickly heat and insects which shall be nameless, not the worst of which Heat apoplexy has, perhaps, prostrated one or two of your friends, and second in the open air unhelmeted would be sud den death. "Will the monsoon never come!n
 Every evening the sun drops down in the west like great ball of fire, but leaves the heat behind him. One evening you notice with great joy two or three black clouds climb up the east to take peep at his de- scending majesty. They are the advance guard, you think, of the monsoon, and it will surely rain before morning Morning dawns, and the sun sets to blowing his heat furnace strong as ever; the sky is once more a great dome of furnished brass. The monsoon at last blows the warning trumpet, and the soughing of his wind to the far-away horizon calls you out from your bed to the veranda Nature holds her breath; great calm, & strange hush-the hush of expectancy fills earth and air.
 Hal here comes the monsoon. Away on the western horizon a great black cloud wave surges up toward the zenith, plotting out the burnish sky in its progress, just as though you poured ink slowly into a brass bowl. Behind this black wave, and nov with if ia la,,ea el,nv, cut every instant by forked lightning and believing, deafening thunder. The quick dartiug adder tongues of flame flash every where, search the believing heavens throughout from top to bottom, through out the whole cloud packed dome
 Now for a second, only for second, the quick-hashing lightning ceases, and an inky blackness, the blackness of Erebus. succeeds, and the thunder bellows as an Englishman in his sea-girt little isle never heard it below. It is no distant rumble, gradually rolling nearer and eliminating in resounding crack overhead. No; around, about and inst overhead the in fernal din never ceases.
 The bellied clouds are pregnant with thunder, and the flame forks flashing hither and thither pierce their wombs and loose the thunder froG its prison. It re- minds one of Michael and his celestial host
 warning with Lucifer and his legions. It ia terrible.
 Inside your bungalow the first advan. cling wind that heralded the monsoon car. ried with it clouds of blinding dust, which is now piled up an inch high on table and | chair and shelf. And still the war of the elements goes on. You cannot hear you, l neighbours voice, though he shouts hi: | utmost; the birds, sffrightsd, shriek in the | thickets, and the native servants huddle | themselves togefher in dark corners fo,
 safety. The sky opens its fioodgates, and | rain in torrents Pours down without inter. l mission for eighty or ninety hours on the | parohe1 earth. Splash splash, on th,
 roof-not in showers, bnt in sheets. Thi, | is the monsoon.
 And when it has passed what a trans | formation it has effected. The arid plain
 is one great lake, through which rise innu | merable trees of glossy green. and crowd | ing their lesfy cathedral focks of parrots
 and mynshs chatter their thanks to GoG for the welcome rain. The great lake soor | disappears, absorbed by the thirsty earth
 and reveals far and fair e1pAnse of yer dure beautiful beyond words in its dag | zling greenery, and sprinkled with flower
 that have shot up in night, esrih's em
 bodied hymn of praise to the Creator fol
 the blessing of the monsoon.