Year: 1878

Bombay Gazette, June ga


The hot weather throughout India this
year has been described on all sides as of
exceptional severity. In Calcutta the heat
has been extraordinary even for that part
of the country, and there have been M
merous cases of heat apoplexy reported.
In the north west provinces the heat has
been almost unprecedented. We hear of
the thermometer registering as much as
100 degrees in the shade, and of deaths
taking place even among the natives in
consequence. Regarding the south of
India, we find that the heat has been no
lees remarkable there than it has been in
one of the Madras newspapers reported
that the air was 30 hot that a cheroot could
almost be lighted at it. In Bombay we
have had our share of hot weather. The
monsoon has at last broken, but before it
did the horrors of the situation were won
derful. There are two kinds of heat in
India, and each has its admirers. There
is the moist heat of the sea bordering dis.
tricts, and the dry heat of the up country.
Sojourners in the interior say, when they
come down to Bombay, that the heavy
moisture in the air is more sickening than
even the hot winds of the Deccan. With
khats khus tatties you can reduce lthe tenn
perature indoors up-country, but the
Cmuistened atmosphere of Bombay will ad-





you everywhere like steaming blanket.
Go where you will, do what you will,
there is no escape from it and its immedi-
ate attendants, inordinate perspiration,
collapsed energies, liver complaints and
prickiy heat.


The monsoon, which generally breaks
about the 9Th of June, held off with per-
sistency which was phenomenal, and the
heat day after day was tremendous. There
were at least two nights when sleep was
next to impossible. The air was perfectly
still. Not a leaf f1uttered. The faintest
zephyr waited from the sea would have
been a gCd send, but it came not. The
awful hot stiffness seemed the prelude to
some supernatural catastrophe. 1t coz
veyed mysterious sense If waiting
for something worse to come. A
grand, crashing, destructive thunder
storm would not have been diegraced by
prelude "f such porteptous. stiffness. Bot
the thunder storm, which would have
been welcome, never burst, and the dense
heat continued. First, the weary victim
turned upon his couch, resteasly trying to
WOO sleep to come to him then be burst
into a p ofuse perspiration, and after
vainiy turning over and over he had to
get up and walk about OF throw himself
exhausted into a cane chair in the veranda
or open air, aud wait patiently for day
break. The hour before the sun rose was



twenty. four hours. The sun might have
brought breeze with him, but he rose
red and angry through hot gray mists the
monarch of stiffness and insnfferabie heat
1t was not until early in the forenoon that
a bree re sprung up and the eagerness with
which it was welcomed was the most elo-
quent testimony to the severity of the
a,rless period of internal torture which had
just been passed through. 1t was splen-
did weather for aPoplexy, and gasping
thin men who had stout, short necked
full -blooded friends, and knew that they
would be gasping too, entertained many
gloomy speculation upon the probable
effects of such dreadful weather. Under
such circumstances as these it can readily
be imagined how welcome the monsoon
has been in Bombay this year. 1t simply
came up with q short-lived gale aboat
midnight one night last week, and after
splnttering about mildly for several days,
giving no good regular downpour, it burst
forth on Friday afternoon with hurri-
cane and rained for twelve hours at a
stretch. On Saturday it was distinguished
by one or two violent gusts that did a
considerable amount of damage. Windows
were torn off, buggies were all but blown
over, and the waves in the harbor were
tossed to an extraordinary height.