ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 147 



rivers. I have never seen that myself, but another some- 

 what similar and very pretty sight I have seen in the Deccan. 

 The ground would be covered with exquisitely beautiful 

 insects — spiders of some kind — with soft plush-like bodies 

 of vivid scarlet, about the size of a cherry stone, but flatter ; 

 they reddened the earth, so thickly did they lie about. I 

 sometimes wondered whether they could be ordinary insects 

 chemically turned red by the action of the rain-water ; for, 

 the shower over, one saw no more of them to notice. 



Rain, as known in the tropics, cannot be rightly imagined 

 by those who have not seen it. It is a very wall or sheet of 

 water, lowered and lowered, hour after hour, day after day, 

 sometimes week after week. For six weeks in succession 

 have I known rain of that tropical sort to fall continuously ; 

 if it stopped at all during that time it was at night, for it 

 certainly did not do so by day for so much as half an hour. 

 One night it surpassed itself ; without storm or sound it 

 steadily descended, and in the morning the rain-gauges 

 were found to register twenty-four inches for the twelve 

 hours ! That was phenomenal, and happened at Telli- 

 cherry, on the west coast ; only to be beaten at Cherapoonji, 

 in Northern India, which has the greatest rainfall in India, 

 if not in the world. 



The year of that night of rain was a disastrous one, and 

 was long remembered for its consequences — devastation by 

 floods, the bursting of dams, the annihilation of villages, the 

 destruction of the people's very livelihood by the drowning 

 of their animals. Of these many were also to be seen lying 

 dead from exposure on the roadside or in the grazing 

 pastures. The very crows fell off the trees, so drenched 

 with the rain and cramped with cold were they. 



The place — Manantavadi, 1 in The Wynad — where we were 

 then living was some two thousand five hundred feet or 

 more above sea-level, and to make it comfortable for people 



1 Generally pronounced Manantoddy. 



