bury themselves in the hardened mud of the pools, and the helices retire into the crevices of the stones or the hollows amongst the roots of the trees, closing the apertures of their shells with the hybernating epiphragm.  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, and even venture to approach the village wells in search of water.  Man equally languishes under the general exhaustion, ordinary exertion becomes distasteful, and the native Singhalese, although inured to the climate, move with lassitude and reluctance.

Meanwhile the air becomes loaded to saturation with aqueous 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 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, 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 replaced by indraughts 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 peculiar twilight the eye is attracted by the unusual 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 through the clouds that overhang the sea[1], 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.

[Footnote 1:  The lightnings of Ceylon are so remarkable, that in the middle ages they were as well known to the Arabian seamen, who coasted the island on their way to China, as in later times the storms that infested the Cape of Good Hope were familiar to early navigators of Portugal.  In the Mohit of SIDI ALI CHELEBI, translated by Von Hammer, it is stated that to seamen, sailing from Diu to Malacca, “the sign of Ceylon being near is continual lightning, be it accompanied by rain or without rain; so that ‘the lightning of Ceylon’ is proverbial for a liar!”—­Journ.  Asiat.  Soc.  Beng. v. 465.]