and at one point flowing gently for some miles through cliffs and walls of white marble.
He finds the climate to be as varied as the scenery. In Kumáun the air of Himálayan altitudes is like that of Tyrol in Europe. To the south, in the region of the Vindhya and Sátpura mountains, the heat is mitigated and the winter season is charming. In the eastern part of Hindustán the atmosphere and the ground are moist, somewhat resembling Bengal. In the western part, the case is not only different, but opposite. There is a proverb of the sky as brass, the earth as iron, and the breeze as a blast from the furnace. Here he will realize its truth, for this is the place of all others to which it is most applicable. Fortunately for human endurance, these conditions are of short duration. The rains, periodically descending, cause the earth instantly to deck itself with a verdant carpet. The change is pleasurable to the sensations of mankind, though the physical effect becomes depressing. Then follows a cool autumn, the presage of the bracing winter, or the 'cold weather' in Anglo-Indian phrase. The tempered radiance of sunlight, the unfailing blue of the sky, the breeze blowing over the rising vegetation, the grateful shade of the groves at mid-day, the lengthening shadows in the golden sunset, the sudden cold after nightfall, the frosty nights, the biting rigour of the air at sunrise, the health-giving dryness of the equable temperature, almost unvarying for several months consecutively — render the climate of Hindustán in
