ATMOSPHERIC VAPOUR AND RAINS. 423 



frequently are, perishing for want of a drop of rain ; 

 crops may fail ; the wind may sweep away the desiccated 

 grass in the form of dry dust from the pasture lands ; 

 and the ground may be as dry and as hard as if paved 

 with granite flagging; while famine affecting millions 

 of ( the helpless inhabitants taxes the resources of the 

 British government to the utmost, so that they are 

 sometimes almost at their wits' end to devise methods 

 for dealing with it (and here it may not be an un- 

 warrantable digression to point out that the British 

 is the only government that has ever attempted to really 

 deal with such a crisis, and which has stood between 

 the native population and death, on such occasions: 

 for the native Princes were never able to do anything 

 worth speaking of to assist them; while the Rajahs 

 talked the people died: the people of India should 

 never forget that). 



Returning however to the point we were discussing, 

 we desire to point out that notwithstanding all these 

 troubles affecting the Indian plains country, the needful 

 supplies of water are all the while ceaselessly passing 

 across them in the zenith, to be deposited in the form 

 of hail and snow upon the crests of the great Hima- 

 layan chain upon whose foot-hills the rank luxuriance 

 of its vegetation is ever flourishing, owing to the 

 superabundant supply of this life-giving element.* 

 We fear there are as yet no data to enable us to 

 assert the fact in positive terms, but it seems to us to 

 follow, as a matter of scientific fact, that the southern 

 slopes of those mountains should then be (during the 

 prevalence of these droughts) more heavily laden with 



* See some observations on these vapour-laden winds, in the 

 ''Himalayan Journals" of Sir J. D. Hooker, 1854., Vol. i., pp. 106 7. 



