THE ATMOSPHERE AND ITS CURRENTS. 



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setting in of the monsoon in all its grand and terrific sublimity. The wind, with a force 

 which nothing could resist, bent the tufted heads of the tall, slim cocoa-nut trees almost 

 to the earth, flinging the light sand into the air in eddying vortices, until the rain had 

 either so increased its gravity, or beaten it into a mass, as to prevent the wind from 

 raising it. The pale lightning streamed from the clouds in broad sheets of flame, which 

 appeared to encircle the heavens as if every element had been converted into fire, and the 

 world was on the eve of a general conflagration, whilst the peal, which instantly followed, 

 was like the explosion of a gunpowder magazine. The heavens seemed to be one vast 

 reservoir of flame, which was propelled from its voluminous bed by some invisible but 

 omnipotent agency, and threatened to fling its fiery ruin upon every thing around. In 

 some parts, however, of the pitchy vapour by which the skies were by this time completely 

 overspread, the lightning was seen only occasionally to glimmer in faint streaks of light, 

 as if struggling, but unable, to escape from its prison, igniting, but too weak to burst, the 

 impervious bosoms of those capacious magazines in which it was at once engendered and 

 pent up. So heavy and continuous was the rain, that scarcely anything, save those vivid 

 bursts of light which nothing could arrest or resist,*was perceptible through it. The 

 thunder was so painfully loud, that it frequently caused the ear to throb ; it seemed as if 

 mines were momentarily springing in the heavens, and I could almost fancy that one of 

 the sublimest fictions of heathen fable was realised at this moment before me, and that I 

 was hearing an assault of the Titans. The surf was raised by the wind and scattered in 

 thin billows of foam over the esplanade, which was completely powdered with the white 

 feathery spray. It extended several hundred yards from the beach ; fish, upwards of 

 three inches long, were found upon the flat roofs of houses in the town during the 

 prevalence of the monsoon, either blown from the sea by the violence of the gales, or 

 taken up in the water-spouts, which are very prevalent in this tempestuous season. When 

 these burst, whatever they contain is frequently borne by the sweeping blast to a 



Commencement of the Monsoon. 



