THE TRIBES ON MY FROSTIER. 



and agueferous devices, tatties and thermantidotes. Bom- 

 bay people do not know what heat is. The only thing to 

 be complained of at this time in Bombay is a certain ten- 

 dency to liquefaction. Chemically speaking, one gets deli- 

 quescent about the end of May. The melting mood is 

 strongest during the morning walk ; at the end of it there 

 is little left of one but a pool of water. But abjure walk- 

 ing, court the sea-breeze, or sit under punkahs, and the 

 climate of Bombay is balmy. These are the signs by which 

 any one may know hot weather. When you take a change 

 of raiment from the drawer and it feels like fresh-baked 

 bread, when you put on your coat and it settles like a 

 blister on your back, when returning to dinner from the 

 evening constitutional you feel as you step through the 

 doorway that you are entering a limekiln, then the weather 

 is getting hot. In such weather every Oriental whose hard 

 fate has not made him a punkah-puller religiously enjoys 

 his midday nap, and so about noon a quiet as of a Scotch 

 Sabbath comes over the land. 



Just at that time when all is stillest and sleepiest, I hold 

 a levee, for a house is like the shadow of a great rock in a 

 weary land, and to its blessed shelter, as the sun grows 

 fiercer and fiercer, all the neighbourhood " foregathers." 



