MAY is signalized by the great event of the change of the monsoon,① and all the grand phenomena which accompany its approach. It is difficult for one who has not resided in the tropics to comprehend the feeling of enjoyment which accompanies these periodical commotions of the atmosphere. In Europe they would be fraught with annoyance, but in Ceylon they are welcomed with a relish proportionate to the monotony they dispel.
Long before the wished-for period arrives, the verdure produced by the previous rains becomes almost obliterated by the burning droughts of March and April. The deciduous②treesshed their foliage, the plants cease to put forth freshleaves, and all vegetable life languishes under the unwholesome heat. The grass withers on the baked and cloven earth, and red dust settles on the branches and thirsty brushwood.
The insects, deprived of their accustomed food, disappear under ground, or hide beneath the decaying bark; the water- beetles bury themselves in the hardened mud of the pools; and the snails retire into the crevices of the rocks or the hollows among the roots of the trees. Butterflies are no longer seen hovering over the flowers; the birds appear fewer and less joyous; and the wild animals and crocodiles, driven by the drought from their accustomed retreats, wander through the jungle, or even venture to approach the village wells in search of water. Man equally languishes under the general exhaustion,③ordinary exertion becomes distasteful, and the Singalese,although inured to the climate, move with lassitude and reluctance.
Meanwhile the air becomes loaded to saturation withaqueous vapour, drawn up by the augmented force of evaporation acting vigorously over land and sea: the sky, instead of its brilliant blue, assumes the sullen tint of lead; and not a breath disturbs the motionless rest of the clouds that hang on the lower range of the hills. At length, generally about the middle of the month, but frequently earlier, the sultry suspense is broken by the arrival of the wished-for change. The sun has by this time nearly attained his greatest northern declination,④ and created a torrid heat throughout the lands of Southern Asia and the peninsula of India.
The air, lightened by its high temperature and such watery vapour as it may contain, rises into loftier regions, and is re- placed by in-draughts from the neighbouring sea; and thus a tendency is gradually given to the formation of a current bringing up from the south the warm humid air of the equator. The wind, therefore, which reaches Ceylon comes laden with moisture, taken up in its passage across the great Indian Ocean. As the monsoon draws near, the days become more overcast and hot, banks of clouds rise over the ocean to the west, and in the twilight the eye is attracted by the peculiar whiteness of the sea-birds that sweep along the strand to seize the objects flung on shore by the rising surf.
At last the sudden lightnings flash among the hills and sheet among the clouds that overhang the sea, and with a crash of thunder the monsoon bursts over the thirsty land, not in showers or partial torrents, but in a wide deluge, that in the course of a few hours overtops the river banks and spreads in inundations over every level plain. The rain at these periods excites the astonishment of a European. It descends in almost continuous streams, so close and dense that the level ground, unable to absorb it sufficiently fast, is covered with one uniform sheet of water; and down the sides of declivities it rushes in a volume that wears channels in the surface. For hours together, the noise of the torrent, as it beatsupon the trees and bursts upon the roofs, flowing thence in rivulets along the ground, occasions an uproar that drowns the ordinary voice, and renders sleep impossible.
