324 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



hunting tlie bison, tracks being easily followed, while 

 the sky is generally overcast with clouds, and the 

 weather cool in these high regions. Towards the end 

 of the month the clouds began to bank up into deep 

 purple masses behind the higher peaks, and at night 

 lightning played incessantly round the horizon. By 

 great exertions we got the house roofed just in time to 

 hans: a bison's frontlet over the door, and christen it 

 " Bison Lodge," before the full force of the monsoon 

 broke upon the plateau on the last day of June. I 

 must not now tell of the many pleasant days and jovial 

 nights passed between those four walls in after years, 

 when the fire blazing in the arched grate I had builded 

 with my own hands, and the jorum of whisky toddy 

 imported from my native hills, deluded us into the 

 belief that we were far away from the exile, if still a 

 pleasant exile, of the highlands of Central India. Such 

 a terrific storm I never saw as on the night of the break- 

 ins of the monsoon, crash after crash seemino; to burst 

 within the rooms, while a blaze of green lightning 

 incessantly lit up the whole features of the hill. It 

 lasted about the whole night, and nearly four inches of 

 rain fell along with it, but on its clearing up in the 

 morning, such is the beautiful drainage of this plateau 

 that in less than an hour a horse could have gallo^^ed over 

 it comfortably in any direction. Rain clouds continued 

 to shroud the higher peaks, and roll round the edges of 

 the plateau, the whole time I remained on the hill, but 

 we never had another heavy storm, and, what is very 

 unusual at such altitudes, the clouds never invaded the 

 centre of the plateau at all. I had repeated returns of 

 the fever, and neither could my people shake it off. 

 Conveniences to help recovery were also wanting, and I 

 left the plateau on the 20th of July to march to Jubbul- 

 piir. It was a melancholy procession down the hill, 



