The rainy season is at first hailed with a delight not easily to be explained.  The long continuance of the hot winds,—­during which period (three months or more) the sky is of the colour of copper, without the shadow of a cloud to shield the earth from the fiery heat of the sun, which has, in that time, scorched the earth and its inhabitants, stunted vegetation, and even affected the very houses—­renders the season when the clouds pour out their welcome moisture a period which is looked forward to with anxiety, and received with universal joy.

The smell of the earth after the first shower is more dearly loved than the finest aromatics or the purest otta.  Vegetation revives and human nature exults in the favourable shower.  As long as the novelty lasts, and the benefit is sensibly felt, all seem to rejoice; but when the intervals of clouds without rain occur, and send forth, as they separate, the bright glare untempered by a passing breeze, poor weak human nature is too apt to revolt against the season they cannot control, and sometimes a murmuring voice is heard to cry out, ‘Oh, when will the rainy season end!’

The thunder and lightning during the rainy season are beyond my ability to describe.  The loud peals of thunder roll for several minutes in succession, magnificently, awfully grand.  The lightning is proportionably vivid, yet with fewer instances of conveying the electric fluid to houses than might be expected when the combustible nature of the roofs is considered; the chief of which are thatched with coarse dry grass.  The casualties are by no means frequent; and although trees surround most of the dwellings, yet we seldom hear of any injury by lightning befalling them or their habitations.  Fiery meteors frequently fall; one within my recollection was a superb phenomenon, and was visible for several seconds.

The shocks from earthquakes are frequently felt in the Upper Provinces of India;[11] I was sensible of the motion on one occasion (rather a severe one), for at least twenty seconds.  The effect on me, however, was attended with no inconvenience beyond a sensation of giddiness, as if on board ship in a calm, when the vessel rolls from side to side.

At Kannoge, now little more than a village in population, between Cawnpore and Futtyghur, I have rambled amongst the ruins of what formerly was an immense city, but which was overturned by an earthquake some centuries past.  At the present period numerous relics of antiquity, as coins, jewels, &c., are occasionally discovered, particularly after the rains, when the torrents break down fragments of the ruins, and carry with the streams of water the long-buried mementos of the riches of former generations to the profit of the researching villagers, and to the gratification of curious travellers, who generally prove willing purchasers.[12]