Page:Provincial geographies of India (Volume 4).djvu/34

18 extremely hot in the summer months and have a moderate cool season.

The real dry zone, from the old frontier of Upper Burma to about 60 miles north of Mandalay, has, for the most part, normally, an average annual rainfall of about 30 inches. But from year to year, it varies capriciously. In Pakôkku, the driest district, the yearly total is not much more than 20 inches. Though Shwebo has the highest mean with 38 inches, in 1920 the actual rainfall was under 24. In this tract, in the plains, the soil is dry and bare; in Spring and early Summer, the temperature rises to as high as 115°; and there is good and seasonable cold weather from November to March, the thermometer in the daytime falling to as low as 55°. At Mandalay, the annual rainfall is nearly 32 inches; the average temperature in January 70°, in May 80°. Scanty rainfall at times causes crops to fail on unirrigated lands and has, occasionally, produced conditions of scarcity approaching famine. Although the Summer is distinctly hot and parching there is no such fierce and fervent heat as in the plains of Upper India. The nights are nearly always bearable. And in Mandalay and Yamèthin and other places similarly situated, constant high winds, though tiringly monotonous, are yet welcome as tempering the excessive heat. In the hills of this area the extremes of temperature are 90° and 32°.

North of about the latitude of the Third Defile, the rainfall again becomes fairly abundant, rising from some 50 inches in Katha to 69 in Bhamo and 80 in Myitkyina, while the temperature, though hot in Summer, is cool and pleasant in the winter months. In the Kachin and Chin Hills, the heat is never excessive and at times the temperature is very low, the range being between 85° and 25°. In the high lands on the Chinese frontier, east of Bhamo, severe frosts prevail for several weeks, producing solid blocks of