170 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



now whirl; in the partially or wholly dried up water - courses 

 and water -basins the ground gapes in deep cracks. Everything 

 that is pleasing vanishes; everything that is unpleasing becomes 

 painfully obtrusive: leaves and flowers, birds and butterflies 

 fade away, or migrate, or die; thorns, spines, and burs are left; 

 snakes, scorpions, and "tarantulas" have their heyday. Inde- 

 scribable heat by day and enervating sultriness by night make 

 this season almost unbearable, and against neither heat nor sultri- 

 ness is there any remedy. The torments are inconceivable to 

 those who know nothing of such weather, when the thermometer 

 registers up to 122° Fahr. in the shade;^* when one is in a constant 

 sweat, yet without being conscious of it, so drying is the heat; 

 when one cloud of dust after another whirls up to heaven, 

 or parching thirst weighs on one like lead. Nor can anyone 

 who has not groaned through these nights, when one tosses on 

 the couch, prevented by the sultriness from resting or sleeping, 

 adequately sympathize with the torments to which men and animals 

 are subjected at this season. Even the sky exchanges its hitherto 

 but rarely clouded blue for a dun colour, for the vapour often hides 

 the sun for half a day at a time, yet without diminishing the oppres- 

 sive heat ; indeed the sultriness seems to increase when the horizon 

 is obscured by such mists. One day follows another without any 

 refreshing of body or soul. No cooling breeze from the north fans 

 the forehead; and the soul is not refreshed by any fragrance of 

 flowers, or song of birds, or enchanting pictures with bright colour 

 and deep shade, such as the flooding light of heaven elsewhere paints 

 in the equatorial regions. Everything living, everything coloured, 

 everything poetical, is gone, sunk into death-like sleep — too dismal 

 to awaken any fancy. Men and beasts seem to wither as the grass 

 and leaves withered ; and like them many a man and many a beast 

 sinks down for ever. In vain does manly courage endeavour to 

 bear up under the burden of these days: the most resolute will give 

 way to sighs and moans. Every piece of work fatigues, even the 

 lightest covering is too heavy, every movement is an effort, every 

 wound becomes a virulent sore. 



But even this winter must at length yield to spring, yet the 



