Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/75

 March 20th.—I have now been four months in India, and my idea of the climate has altered considerably; the hot winds are blowing; it is very oppressive; if you go out during the day, I can compare it to nothing but the hot blast you would receive in your face, were you suddenly to open the door of an oven.

The evenings are cool and refreshing; we drive out late; and the moonlight evenings at present are beautiful; when darkness comes on, the fire-flies illuminate the trees, which appear full of flitting sparks of fire; these little insects are in swarms; they are very small and ugly, with a light like the glowworm's in the tail, which, as they fly, appears and suddenly disappears: how beautifully the trees in the adjoining grounds are illuminated at night, by these little dazzling sparks of fire!

The first sight of a pankhā is a novelty to a griffin. It is a monstrous fan, a wooden frame covered with cloth, some ten, twenty, thirty, or more feet long, suspended from the ceiling of a room, and moved to and fro by a man outside by means of a rope and pullies, and a hole in the wall through which the rope passes; the invention is a native one; they are the greatest luxuries, and are also handsome, some being painted and gilt, the ropes covered with silk, and so shaped or scooped, as to admit their vibratory motion without touching the chandeliers, suspended in the same line with the pankhā, and when at rest, occupying the space scooped out. In the up country, the pankhā is always pulled during the night over the chārpāī or bed.

The weather is very uncertain; sometimes very hot, then suddenly comes a north-wester, blowing open every door in the house, attended with a deluge of heavy rain, falling straight down in immense drops: the other evening it was dark as night, the lightning blazed for a second or two, with the blue sulphureous light you see represented on the stage; the effect was beautiful; the forked lightning was remarkably strong; I did not envy the ships in the bay.

The foliage of the trees, so luxuriously beautiful and so novel, is to me a source of constant admiration. When we girls used to laugh at the odd trees on the screens, we wronged the Chinese in imagining they were the productions of fancy; the whole