Let us see, now, how this catastrophe is avoided. When the sun is in the southern hemisphere, that is, during the winter season, the north-east monsoon prevails in Hindostan. When he is in the northern hemisphere, the south-west monsoon, which is the rainy monsoon, or crop monsoon, prevails. This change of monsoons is produced as follows: Soon after the sun crosses the equator into the northern hemisphere, he begins to pour down his fierce rays upon Hindostan, and, passing farther and farther to the north, in the latter part of April, or the beginning of May, he is nearly perpendicularly over the Great Deserts marked in the sketch. These deserts are interminable wastes of sand, in which there is not so much as a blade of grass to be found. They absorb heat very rapidly, and in a short time become like so many fiery furnaces. The air above them rarefies and ascends, a comparative vacuum of great extent is formed, and a great change begins now to take place in the atmospheric phenomena. This vacuum being in the rear of the arrow A, or the north-east monsoon blowing over Hindostan, first slackens the force of this wind—drawing it back, as it were. It becomes weaker and weaker, as the furnaces become hotter and hotter. Calms ensue, and after a long struggle, the wind is finally turned back, and the south-west monsoon has set in.

If the reader will cast his eye on the series of arrows, B, C, D, E, and F, he will see how this gradual change is effected. I say gradual, for it is not effected per saltum, but occupies several weeks. The arrow F represents the south-east trade-wind, blowing toward the equator. As this wind nears the equator, it begins to feel the influence of the deserts spoken of. The calm which I have described as beginning at the arrow A, is gradually extended to the equator. As the south-east wind approaches that great circle, it finds nothing to oppose its passage. Pretty soon, it not only finds nothing to oppose its passage, but something to invite it over; for the calm begins now to give place to an indraught toward the Great Deserts. The south-east wind, thus encouraged, changes its course, first to the north, and then to the north-east, and blows stronger and stronger as the season advances, and the heat accumulates over the deserts; until at last the south-east trade-wind of the southern hemisphere has become the south-west monsoon of the northern hemisphere! This monsoon prevails from about the 1st of May to the 1st of November, when the sun has again passed into the southern hemisphere, and withdrawn his heat from the great deserts. The normal condition of things being thus restored, the vanquished north-east trade-wind regains its courage, and, chasing back the south-west monsoon, resumes its sway.

If the reader will again cast his eye upon the sketch, he will see that the south-west winds which are now blowing over Hindostan, instead of being dry winds, must be heavily laden with moisture. They have had a clean sweep from the tropic of Capricorn, with no land intervening between them and the coast of Hindostan. They have followed the sun in his course, and under the influence of his perpendicular rays have lapped up the waters like a thirsty wolf. The evaporation in these seas is enormous. It has been stated, on the authority of the Secretary of the Geographical Society of Bombay, that it has been found in the Bay of Bengal to exceed an inch daily. From having too little water during the winter months in Hindostan, we are now, in the summer months, in danger of having too much. The young cotton crop will be drowned out. What is to prevent it? Here we have another beautiful provision at hand. The reader has observed the Ghaut Mountains stretching along parallel with the west coast of Hindostan. These mountains protect the plains from inundation. They have, therefore, equally important functions to perform with the deserts. The south-west monsoon blows square across these mountains. As the heavily laden wind begins to ascend the first slopes, it commences to deposit its moisture. Incessant rains set in, and immense quantities of water fall before the winds have passed the mountains. The precipitation has been known to be as great as twelve or thirteen inches in a single day! The winds, thus deprived of their excess of water are now in a proper condition to fertilize, without drowning the immense plains that lie between the Ghauts and the Himalayas—which, as before remarked, is the cotton region of India. It is thus that the Great Deserts of Central Asia produce the cotton crop of Hindostan. To the ignorant Tartar who ventures across the margins of these deserts, all seems dreary, desolate, and death-like, and he is at a loss to conceive for what purpose they were created. Clothe these deserts with verdure, and intersperse them with rivers and mountains, and forthwith the fertile plains of Hindostan would become a great desert, and its two hundred millions of inhabitants perish.

We captured on board the last prize a batch of Bombay newspapers—large “dailies,” edited with ability, and filled with news from all parts of the world. It is the press, more than anything else, that indicates the growth and prosperity of a country. One only needed to look at the long columns of these immense dailies, filled with advertisements, to realize the fact that Bombay was a bee-hive, containing its three hundred thousand inhabitants. We were, indeed, in the midst of a great empire, of which, in the western world, we read, it is true, but of which we have no just conception until we visit it. The British empire in India, stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Strait of Malacca, is a creation which does honor to our race and language. I had coasted nearly its whole extent, and everywhere I found evidences of contentment, thrift, and prosperity. A constant stream of British shipping was passing to and fro, developing its immense commerce, and pouring its untold millions into the British exchequer. Powerful and swift steamships bring the home mails to three or four prominent points along the coast, as Aden, Ceylon, Singapore, Hong Kong, and from these points other steamers spread it broadcast over the empire. Railroads are pushed in every direction, there being as many as three thousand miles in operation, and the navigation of the coast districts of Hindostan has been carried, by means of a series of lagoons and canals, from Cape Comorin, hundreds of miles to the northward. These railroads and canals have opened up new fields of industry, and have been of especial service in developing that pet idea of England, the production of cotton.Up to the breaking out of our war, the cultivation of this valuable staple in India was a mere experiment. It is now an assured success. Those great fields lying between the Ghauts and the Himalayas of which we have been speaking, are being brought into connection with the sea-board, by lines of easy and cheap transportation. They have been found equal to our Southern plantations in the production of the article, and labor is a hundred per cent. cheaper, at least, than with us. Here are all the elements of cheap production. Our Yankee brethren have talked a good deal of what they “conquered” in the war, and have been quarrelling ever since over the fruits of their victory. Here is one of their conquests which no one can doubt—the transfer of the cotton supply of the world, from these Southern States to British India. The time is not far distant when Yankee spindles and looms will be spinning and weaving India cotton for the supply of their own people.

The moral conquest of India, by the British people, is even more remarkable and more admirable than its physical conquest. Since their last Indian war, the whole country, from one end of it to the other, has settled down in the most profound peace. Nor is this the peace of despotism, for in comparison with the extent of territory, and the two hundred millions of people to be governed, the number of troops is ridiculously small. The conquest is one of arts and civilization, and not of arms. The railroad, the canal, the ship, the printing press, and above all, a paternal and beneficent government, have worked out the wonderful problem of the submission of teeming millions to the few. It is the conquest of race and of intellect. The docile Hindoo, not devoid of letters himself, has realized the fact that a superior people has come to settle in his country, to still domestic broils, strip former despots of their ill-gotten and much-abused power, and to rule him with humanity and justice. The torch of civilization has shone in dark places, dispelled many prejudices, and brought to light and broken up many hideous practices. Schools and colleges have sprung up everywhere, and the natural taste of the native population for letters has been cultivated. In the very newspapers which we are reviewing are to be found long dissertations and criticisms, by Hindoo scholars, on various matters of morals, science, and literature.

A government whose foundations are thus laid will be durable. In Australia, New Zealand, and other colonies, where the white population, in the course of a few years, will greatly preponderate over the native, mere adolescence will bring about independence. But India will never become adolescent in this sense. She will remain indefinitely a prosperous ward in chancery—the guardian and the ward living amicably together, and each sharing the prosperity of the other.

On the day after leaving the Malabar coast, we spoke a Portuguese bark, from Rio Janeiro bound to Goa, a short distance to the northward of us. This was the only Portuguese we met in these seas, of which they were, at one period of their history, entire masters. Vasco de Gama had made the seas classic by his adventures, and his countrymen, following in his track, had studded the coast with towns, of which Goa was one of the most ancient and important. As between the Hindoo and the Portuguese, the latter would probably long have maintained his ascendency, but there came along that superior race—that white race which has never submitted to any admixture of its blood—of which we have just been speaking, and nature, with her unvarying laws, had done the rest. The Portuguese gave place to the Englishman, as naturally as the African, and afterward the Hindoo, had given place to the Portuguese.

Passing through the chain of islands which extends parallel with the Malabar coast for some distance, we stretched across the Arabian Sea in the direction of the east coast of Africa. We were now in the height of the season of the north-east monsoon, which was a fair wind for us, and the weather was as delightful as I have ever experienced it in any part of the globe—not even excepting our own Gulf of Mexico, and coasts of Alabama, and Florida, in the summer season. For twelve successive days, we did not have occasion to lower a studding sail, day or night! We had a constant series of clear skies, and gentle breezes. The nights were serene, and transparent, and the sunsets were magnificent beyond description. The trade wind is, par excellence, the wind of beautiful sunsets. Bright, gauzy clouds, float along lazily before it, and sometimes the most charming cumuli are piled up on the western horizon while the sun is going down. Stately cathedrals, with their domes and spires complete, may be traced by the eye of fancy, and the most gorgeous of golden, violet, orange, purple, green, and other hues, light up now a colonnade, now a dome, and now a spire of the aËrial edifice. And then came on the twilight, with its gray and purple blended, and with the twilight, the sounds of merriment on board the Alabama—for we had found a successor for Michael Mahoney, the Irish fiddler, and the usual evening dances were being held. We had been now some time at sea, since leaving Singapore; the “jail had been delivered,” the proper punishments administered, and Jack, having forgotten both his offences, and their punishment, had again become a “good boy,” and was as full of fun as ever.

We had some fine fishing while passing through the Arabian Sea. The dolphin came around us in schools, and a number of them were struck with the “grains,” and caught with lines—the bait being a piece of red flannel rag. And some of the seamen resorted to an ingenious device for entrapping the flying fish by night. A net being spread, with out-riggers, under the bow of the ship, and a light being held just above it, the fish, as they would rise in coveys—being flushed from time to time by the noise of the ship through the water—would rush at the light, and striking against the bow of the ship, tumble into the net beneath. Bartelli, on several mornings, spread my breakfast-table with them.

On the 29th of January, we observed in latitude 2° 43' north, and longitude 51° east; and on the following evening passed through a remarkable patch of the sea. At about eight P. M., there being no moon, but the sky being clear, and the stars shining brightly, we suddenly passed from the deep blue water in which we had been sailing, into a patch of water so white that it startled me; so much did it appear like a shoal. To look over the ship’s side, one would have sworn that she was in no more than five or six fathoms of water. The officer of the deck became evidently alarmed, and reported the fact to me, though I myself had observed it. There was no shoal laid down, within several hundred miles of our position, on the chart, and yet here was so manifestly one, that I shortened sail—we were running seven or eight knots per hour at the time, with a fresh breeze—hove the ship to, and got a cast of the deep-sea lead. The line ran out, and out, until a hundred fathoms had been taken by the lead, and still we found no bottom. We now checked the line, and hauling in the lead, made sail again. My fears thus quieted, I observed the phenomenon more at leisure. The patch was extensive. We were several hours in running through it. Around the horizon there was a subdued glare, or flush, as though there were a distant illumination going on, whilst overhead there was a lurid, dark sky, in which the stars paled. The whole face of nature seemed changed, and with but little stretch of the imagination, the Alabama might have been conceived to be a phantom ship, lighted up by the sickly and unearthly glare of a phantom sea, and gliding on under the pale stars one knew not whither.

Upon drawing a bucket of this water, it appeared to be full of minute luminous particles; the particles being instinct with life, and darting, and playing about in every direction; but upon a deck-lantern being brought, and held over the bucket, the little animals would all disappear, and nothing but a bucket full of grayish water would be left. Here was an area of twenty miles square, in which Nature, who delights in life, was holding one of her starlight revels, with her myriads upon myriads of living creatures, each rejoicing in the life given it by its Creator, and dying almost as soon as born. The sun would rise on the morrow, over a sea as blue as usual, with only some motes in the pelluced waters glinting back his rays; and this twenty miles square of life would be no longer distinguishable from the surrounding waters.

We crossed the equator on the 30th of January. The winds had now become light, and frequent calms ensued, though the bright weather continued. On the 9th of February we made the Comoro islands, that lie not a great way from the coast of Africa, and, getting up steam, ran in, and anchored at Johanna. This island is the most frequented of the group; ships bound to and from the East Indies, by the way of the Mozambique channel, frequently stopping here for refreshments. All these islands are volcanic in origin. They are of small extent, rise abruptly out of the sea, with deep water around them, and are mountainous. They are not claimed by any European nation; nor do any of the chiefs on the neighboring coast of Africa attempt to exercise jurisdiction over them. They are inhabited by a mixed race of Arabs, Africans, and East Indians, and each has its separate government, which is always a government of force, and is frequently overthrown by revolutions. Johanna, at the time we visited it, was under the rule of an Arab, who styled himself, the “Sultan Abdallah.” From the circumstance that English ships frequently stop here, most of the inhabitants who live on the sea-coast speak a little English, and we were surprised, when we anchored, to find ourselves quite well known. The name of our ship was familiar to the dusky inhabitants, and they were evidently much delighted at our arrival. The “Sultan” did not come on board—he was busy, he said, putting up a sugar-mill—but he sent his Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Commander-in-Chief of his Army to see me; and with these, Galt, my paymaster, had no difficulty in contracting for the regular supply of bullocks and vegetables, to be sent off to us during our stay.

I had come in solely for the purpose of refreshing my crew, and for this purpose we remained a week. During this time we became quite friendly with the Johannese—receiving frequent visits from them, and visiting them at their houses in return. We were quite surprised at the intelligence and civilization which characterized them. They nearly all read and write, and the better classes set up some pretensions to literature. They are Mohammedans in faith, and I found some of their priests, who were fond of visiting me, sprightly, well informed, and liberal men, acknowledging both Moses and Christ to have been prophets, and entertaining a respect for the Christian religion; doubtless the result of their intercourse with the English.

I visited the houses of some of my friends with the hope of getting a glimpse at their domestic life, but was disappointed. They received me with all cordiality and respect, but the females of their families were carefully kept out of sight. A female slave would fan me, and hand me my coffee and sherbet, but that was all. Their slavery appeared to be of a mitigated form, the slaves being on easy and even familiar terms with their masters. The houries who fanned me could have been bought for twenty dollars each. The price of a slave fresh from the coast, is not more than half that sum.

I gave my sailors a run on shore, but this sort of “liberty” was awful hard work for Jack. There was no such thing as a glass of grog to be found in the whole town, and as for a fiddle, and Sal for a partner—all of which would have been a matter of course in civilized countries—there were no such luxuries to be thought of. They found it a difficult matter to get through with the day, and were all down at the beach long before sunset—the hour appointed for their coming off—waiting for the approach of the welcome boat. I told Kell to let them go on shore as often as they pleased, but no one made a second application.

On the 15th of February, having received on board a supply of half a dozen live bullocks, and some fruits and vegetables, we got under way, and again turned our head to the south-west. The winds were light, but we were much assisted by the currents; for we were now approaching the Mozambique Channel, and the south-west current, of which I spoke when we left the Cape of Good Hope for our run before the “brave west winds,” to the eastward, was hurrying us forward, sometimes at the rate of forty or fifty miles a day. As we progressed, the wind freshened, and by the time we had entered the narrowest part of the channel between Madagascar and the African coast, which lies in about 15° south latitude, we lost the fine weather and clear skies, which we had brought all the way across the Arabian Sea. We now took several gales of wind. Rain-squalls were of frequent occurrence. As we approached the south-west end of Madagascar, which lies just without the Tropic of Capricorn, we encountered one of the most sublime storms of thunder and lightning I ever witnessed. It occurred at night. Black rain-clouds mustered from every quarter of the compass, and the heavens were soon so densely and darkly overcast, that it was impossible to see across the ship’s deck. Sometimes the most terrific squalls of wind accompany these storms, and we furled most of the sails, and awaited in silence the denouement. The thunder rolled and crashed, as if the skies were falling in pieces; and the lightning—sheet lightning, streaked lightning, forked lightning—kept the firmament almost constantly ablaze. And the rain! I thought I had seen it rain before, but for an hour, Madagascar beat the Ghaut Mountains. It came down almost literally by the bucketfull. Almost a continual stream of lightning ran down our conductors, and hissed as it leaped into the sea. There was not much wind, but all the other meteorological elements were there in perfection. Madagascar is, perhaps, above all other countries, the bantling and the plaything of the storm, and thunder and lightning. Its plains, heated to nearly furnace-heat, by a tropical sun, its ranges of lofty mountains, the currents that sweep along its coasts, and its proximity to equatorial Africa, all point it out as being in a region fertile of meteorological phenomena. Cyclones of small diameter are of frequent occurrence in the Mozambique Channel. They travel usually from south-east to north-west, or straight across the channel. We took one of these short gales, which lasted us the greater part of a day.

Leaving the channel, and pursuing our way toward the Cape of Good Hope, we sounded on the Agulhas Bank on the 7th of March—our latitude being 35° 10', and longitude 24° 08'. This bank is sometimes the scene of terrible conflicts of the elements in the winter season. Stout ships are literally swamped here, by the huge, wall-like seas; and the frames of others so much shaken and loosened in every knee and joint, as to render them unseaworthy. The cause of these terrible, short, racking seas, is the meeting of the winds and currents. Whilst the awful, wintry gale is howling from the west and north-west, the Mozambique, or Agulhas current, as it is now called, is setting in its teeth, sometimes at the rate of two or three knots per hour. A struggle ensues between the billows lashed into fury by the winds, and the angry current which is opposing them. The ground-swell contributes to the turmoil of the elements, and the stoutest mariner sometimes stands appalled at the spectacle of seas with nearly perpendicular walls, battering his ship like so many battering-rams, and threatening her with instant destruction. Hence the name of the “stormy cape,” applied to the Cape of Good Hope.Arriving on our old cruising ground off the pitch of the Cape, we held ourselves here a few days, overhauling the various ships that passed. But American commerce, which, as the reader has seen, had fled this beaten track before we left for the East Indies, had not returned to it. The few ships of the enemy that passed, still gave the Cape a wide berth, and winged their flight homeward over the by-ways, instead of the highways of the ocean. We found the coast clear again of the enemy’s cruisers. That huge old coal-box, the Vanderbilt, having thought it useless to pursue us farther, had turned back, and was now probably doing a more profitable business, by picking up blockade-runners on the American coast. This operation paid—the captain might grow rich upon it. Chasing the Alabama did not. Finding that it was useless for us to cruise longer off the Cape, we ran into Cape Town, and came to anchor at half-past four, on the afternoon of the 20th of March. We had gone to sea from Simon’s Town, on our way to the East Indies, on the 24th of the preceding September,—our cruise had thus lasted within a day or two of six months.