Some hail fell among the rain, but not large enough to
hurt any one. The thunder was loud and often startling to the
strongest nerves, and the lightning vivid, and almost incessant. We
managed to keep the road because it was merely a beaten pathway below
the common level of the country, and we could trace it by the greater
depth of the water, and the absence of all shrubs and grass. All
roads in India soon become watercourses--they are nowhere metalled;
and, being left for four or five months every year without rain,
their soil is reduced to powder by friction, and carried off by the
winds over the surrounding country.[2] I was on horseback, but my
wife and child were secure in a good palankeen that sheltered them
from the rain. The bearers were obliged to move with great caution
and slowly, and I sent on every person I could spare that they might
keep moving, for the cold blast blowing over their thin and wet
clothes seemed intolerable to those who were idle. My child's
playmate, Gulab, a lad of about ten years of age, resolutely kept by
the side of the palankeen, trotting through the water with his teeth
chattering as if he had been in an ague.
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