102 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



This is the mystery of the rain-cloud and the 

 watershed from whence all the water that we must 

 have is derived. And hence it is that I have per- 

 sistently spoken of the nimbus cloud as being the 

 most important of all the ocean's auxiliaries. Of 

 course, it will be seen that without the aid of the 

 wind to convey it to its destination, it would be of 

 no avail, any more than it would have its being at 

 all but for the beneficent sun. But it would be a 

 long and somewhat dull process to trace the inter- 

 dependence of each of the meteorological phenomena. 

 We can only deal with them one at a time, and just 

 hint at the way in which their influences depend upon 

 the aid they receive from one another. Perhaps I 

 may here again allude to the work of the nimbus 

 as applied to India only briefly though, because I 

 have already, in a previous article, gone into this 

 great question at length, and repetition, although 

 partly unavoidable in a work of this kind to some 

 extent, must be kept within the smallest possible 

 limits. Still, the work of supplying the otherwise 

 arid plains of India with their prime necessity, water, 

 and the strikingly spectacular way in which this is 

 effected, will excuse some repetition. The imagina- 

 tion dwells fondly upon the fact of those many 

 millions of very poor people dependent upon the 

 cultivation of the soil for their daily food, scanty and 

 unvarying as that is, awaiting in almost breathless 

 suspense the coming of the deliverer, the advent of 

 the south-west monsoon, with its burden of rain- 

 carrying clouds, from the remote and lonely ocean. 

 In like manner, too, but without the sympathy of 

 human interest, we can picture the cattle, the beasts 



