228 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
and is reverberated from hill to hill with a loud- 
ness and continuity perfectly appalling. The light- 
ning absolutely seems to fill the valleys, wrapping 
every object in a sheet of flame, the flashes being so 
successive that there is scarcely time to draw breath 
between the intervals. The hot sulphurous smell — 
the smoking ground fired in places by the electric 
blaze — the singed shrubs, with occasionally the riven 
and charred trunks of huge trees quivering like grim 
and blackened skeletons, form a union of objects 
which the eye cannot meet without terror. 
The quantity of rain poured from the clouds is so 
prodigious, that, in an almost inconceivably short space 
of time, from the side of every mountain within the 
tempest’s range, cataracts are seen pouring into the 
valleys beneath, dashing from rock to rock, or from 
ledge to ledge, foaming, sparkling, and hissing with a 
turbulence which drowns every other sound but that 
produced by the awful crashings of the thunder above. 
The wind, rushing in terrific eddies down the slopes 
of the hills, tears away in its impetuous progress the 
smaller growth, laying them in many places perfectly 
bare, uprooting trees, and hurling huge masses of rock 
into the ravines below, through which the congregated 
waters are forcing their way, interrupted by these and 
other impediments. 
If the traveller should not obtain shelter during these 
fierce conflicts of the elements, his peril must become 
imminent, for the wind would most probably sweep 
him from the path and send him to his grave amid 
the foaming waters. These mountain storms are 
generally accompanied by whirlwinds which nothing 
