Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/508

444 ern India, condensing into rain the watery vapours borne upon the two periodical winds called monsoons from the seas of Arabia and Bengal, and sending them in streams to water the lowlands, they also seem in a remarkable way to have been built by God as a health-retreat for invalids languishing under a tropical sun. Here, within three hours' ride of the intense heat of the torrid zone, you enjoy a climate delightfully mild and agreeable, though from its peculiarity not equal to that of the temperatè zone. The mornings and evenings are always cool, nor at mid-day does the thermometer rise above 70° in the shade. The direct rays of the sun at noon are powerful; but when out of these direct rays, you are always cool. In January and February a slight coating of ice is found upon the ponds in the morning, and in the warmest season woollen clothes are not laid aside.

The total change of the vegetation from that of the plains adds to the charm of the place. Instead of the cocoanut, date, and mango, you have in the ravines dense forests of trees allied, not to those of the torrid, but to those of the temperate zone; and in place of the oleander and the lotus and other flowers of the plains,