CHAP. II.] CLIMATE. 61 



it is covered with the descending torrent, flashes into 

 it and disappears instantaneously; but, when it strikes 

 a drier surface, in seeking better conductors, it often 

 opens a hollow like that formed by the explosion of 

 a shell, and frequently leaves behind it traces of vitri- 

 fication. 1 In Ceylon, however, occurrences of this kind 

 are rare, and accidents are seldom recorded from light- 

 ning, probably owing to the profusion of trees, and espe- 

 cially of coccfrmt palms, which, when drenched with 

 rain, intercept the discharge, and conduct the electric 

 fluid to the earth. The rain at these periods excites 

 the astonishment of a European : it descends in almost 

 continuous streams, so close and so dense that the level 

 ground, unable to absorb it sufficiently fast, is covered 

 with one uniform sheet of water, and down the sides of 

 acclivities it rushes in a volume that wears channels in 

 the surface. 2 For hours together, the noise of the 

 torrent, as it beats upon the trees and bursts upon the 

 roofs, flowing thence in rivulets along the ground, occa- 

 sions an uproar that drowns the ordinary voice, and 

 renders sleep impossible. 



This violence, however, seldom lasts more than an 

 hour or two, and after intermittent paroxysms, it gra- 

 dually abates, and a serenely clear sky supervenes. For 

 some days, intensely heavy showers continue to fall at 



1 See DARWIN'S Naturalist's Voy- 

 age, ch. iii. for an account of those 

 vitrified siliceous tubes which are 

 formed by lightning entering loose 

 sand. During a thunderstorm which 

 passed over Galle, on the 16th May, 

 1854, the fortifications were shaken 

 by lightning, and an extraordinary 

 cavity was opened behind the re- 

 taining wall of the rampart, where a 

 hole, a yard in diameter, was carried 

 into the ground to the depth of 

 twenty feet, and two chambers, each 

 six feet in length, branched out on 

 either side at its extremity. 



2 One morning on awaking at 

 Pusilawa, in the hills between Kandy 

 and Neuera-ellia, I was taken to see 



the effect of a few hours' rain, during 

 the night, on a macadamised road 

 which I had passed the evening be- 

 fore. There had been no symptom of 

 a storm at sunset, and the morning 

 was again bright and cloudless ; but 

 between midnight and dawn such an 

 inundation had swept the hills that 

 in many places the metal had been 

 washed from the highways over the 

 face of the acclivities; and in one 

 spot where a sudden bend forced the 

 torrent to impinge against a bank, 

 it had scooped out an excavation ex- 

 tending to the centre of the high 

 road, thirteen feet in diameter, and 

 deep enough to hold a carriage and 

 horses. 



