280 
is healthy in summer, and almost as bracing in winter as 
Europe. These are favourite health resorts, and may, 
perhaps, become the sites of future colonisation, for it seems 
probable that there the European will thrive and continue 
to reproduce his race, which it is said would cease to exist in 
the plains after the third generation. 
The following extracts from Mr. J. Talboy Wheeler’s “ Rare 
and Curious Narratives of Old Travellers in India in the 
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” published in Calcutta 
in the year 1864, gives a quaint and graphic account of the 
Monsoons as observed in those days, by Purchas and Van 
Liuschoten. 
The former, who visited India somewhere about 267 years 
ago, says : — 
“The mightie Riuers of Indus and Ganges, paying their fine to the 
Lord of waters, the Ocean, almost vnder the very Tropick of Cancer, do (as 
it were) betwixt their watery armes, present into that their Mother’s bosome, 
this large Chersonesus ; A Countrey full of Kingdomes, riches, people, and 
(our dewest taske) superstitious costomes. As Italy is diuided by the 
Appennine, and bounded by the Alpes, so is this by the Hills which they 
call Gate ,* which goe from East to West (but not directly) and quite thorow to 
the Cape Comori, which not only haue entred league with many In-lets of 
the Sea, to diuide the soyle into many Siguiories and Kingdomes, but with the 
Ayre and Natures higher officers, to dispence with the ordinary orders, and 
established Statutes of Nature, at the same time, vnder the same eleuation 
of the Sun, diuidiug to Summer and Winter, their seasons and possessions. 
For where as cold is banished out of these Countries (except on the tops of 
some Hills) and altogether prohibited to approach so neere the Court and 
presence of the Sun ; and therefore their Winter and Summer is not 
reckoned by heate and cold, but by the fairnesse and foulnesse of weather, 
which in those parts divided the yeere by equall proportions ; at the same 
time, when on the West part of this Peninsula, between that ridge of 
Mountaines and the Sea, it is after their appellation Summer, which is 
from September till April, in which time it is alwayes cleere skie, without 
once or very little raining ; on the other side the hills, which they call the 
coast of Choromandell, it is their Winter ; euery day and night yeelding 
abundance of raines, besides those terrible thunders which both begin and 
end their Winter. And from April till September in a contrary vicissitude ; 
on the Westerne parte is Winter, and on the Easterne, Summer ; insomuch 
that in little more than twentie leagues iourney in some place, as where they 
crosse the Hills to Saint Thomas, on the one side of the Hill you ascend 
with a faire Summer, on the other you descend attendant with a stormy 
Winter. The likes, saith Linschoten, hapneth at the Cape Eosalgate, in 
Arabia, and in many other places of the East. 
* He alludes to the Western Ghauts. 
