Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1892-07-01
WAITING FOR THE MONSOON.
A Period OF .Dreary Suspense In India
and the Joy That Follows.

A Period Of Dreary Suspense in India
and the JOY That Follows.
Day after day the sun pours down wither-
ing heat, the air is sick with it, the ground
is hard as iron and gapes in great cracks,
as though open mouthed, pleading to the
pitiless sky for a drop of water: the wide
expanse of country that a few months past
was green and flower besprinkled is brown,
the grass crisped with a fierce heat and fall
ing to powder if rubbed; the trees, mostly
evergreens, are parched and dusty; no
breath of air rustles through, no leaf stirs.
They resemble great toy trees, with leaves
of painted wood. There is no sound of life
anywhere; the noisy green parrots are silent
and hide from the sur in the heart of the
densest and leafiest top.
You may, perhaps, see a crow or a mynah
sit solidarity on a b6ugh, with dropping
wing and gaping beak, helpless in this
great purgatory of fire. "The monsoon,
the moonson-will it never Gomez" you ask
as you toss half naked on your bed, worried
by prickly heat and insects which shall be
nameless, not the worst of which is the
persistent, blood sucking mosquito. Heat
apopleXy has, perhaps, Frustrated one or
two of your friends, and a second in the
OpCu C4A "ou1u OC SuAuCA
death. evil the monsoon never comet"
Every evening the sun drops down in the
west like a 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 a 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 trum-
pet, and the soughing of his wind to the
far away horizon calls you out from your
bed to the veranda. Nature holds her
breath; a great calm, a strange hush-the
hush of eXpectancy-flls earth and air.
Ha! here comes the monsoon. Away on
| the western horizon a great black cloud
wave surges up toward the zenith, blot
ting out the FURNISHED sky in its progress,
just as though you poured ink slowly into
| a brass bowl. Behind this black wave and
| moving with it is a great, dense ebon mass,
cut every instant by forked lightning and
believing, deafening thunder. The quick
darting 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 q second, only for a second, the
| quick, flashing lightning ceases, n an
inky blackness, the blackness of Erebus,
| succeeds, and the thunder bellows as Eng
lishman in his seagirt little isle never
heard it below. It is no distant rumble,
gradually rolling nearer and eliminating
in a resembling crack overhead. No;
around about and Just 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 from it's prison. 1t reminds
one of Michael and the celestial host war
ring with Lucifer and his legions. 1t is ter
rible.
Inside your bungalow the first advancing
wind that heraled the monsoon carried with
it clouds of binding dust, which is now
piled up an inch high on table and chair
and shelf. And still the wal of the ele'
ments goes on. You cannot hear you1
neighbours voice, though he shout his ut
most; the birds, affrighted, shrek in the
thickets, and the native servants huddle
themselves together in dark corners fol
safety. The sky opens its food gates and
rain in torrents pours down without inter
mission for eighty or ninety hours on the
parched earth. Splash! Splash! on the ROOT
hot in showers, but in sheets. This 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 in.
Vulnerable trees of glossy green, and crowd
ing their leafy c%athedrals, fiocks of parrots
and mynahs chatter their thanks to God
for the welcome rain. The great lake soon
disappears, absorbed by the thirsty earth,
and reveals a far and fair expanse of YER
durs beautiful beyond words in it's dazzling
greenery, and sprinkled with flowers that
have shot up in a night, earth's embodied
hymn of praise to the Creator for the bless
ing of the monsoon.-London Hawk.