"Monsoon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Arnold Morley, M.P. The former landed at Gibraltar, and the latter at Algiers. Through the long voyage to Bombay the gallant little yacht held stoutly on her course, meeting first a mistral in the Mediterranean, then strong head-winds in the Red Sea, and having the N.E. monsoon in her ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... province in both Upper and Lower Burma is rice. In Lower Burma it is overwhelmingly the largest crop; in Upper Burma it is grown wherever practicable. Throughout the whole of the moister parts of the province the agricultural season is the wet period of the south-west monsoon, lasting from the middle of May until November. In some parts of Lower Burma and in the dry districts of Upper Burma a hot season crop is also grown with the assistance of irrigation during the spring months. Oxen are used for ploughing the higher lands ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... causing the blue devils; then the rainy season of Abyssinia with the flood-gates of the firmament opened, and an universal down-pour of rain, enough to submerge half a continent in a few hours; lastly, there was the pelting monsoon of India, a steady shut-in-house kind of rain. To which of these rains should I compare this dreadful Masika of East Africa? Did not Burton write much about black mud in Uzaramo? Well, a country whose surface soil is called black mud in fine weather, what can it be called when forty days' rain ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... weeks, from Padang to Hodeida. The Choising was some ninety meters long and had a speed of nine miles, though sometimes only four. If she had not accidentally arrived I had intended to cruise high along the west coast of Sumatra to the region of the northern monsoon. I came about six degrees north, then over Aden to the Arabian coast. In the Red Sea the northeastern monsoon, which here blows southeast, could bring us to Djidda. I had heard in Padang that Turkey is allied with us, so we would be able to get ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... help himself he knew not. But all this, with other inward troubles, lay hard on our Captain's Spirits, and put him very much out of Humour; for his own Company also were pressing him every Day to be gone, because, now was the heighth of the Easterly Monsoon, the only Wind to carry ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... She was puzzled at herself, puzzled at Louis, puzzled at the people round her. Men went about barefoot in pyjamas, women in muslin nightdresses all day after Suez; in the Indian Ocean, one blazing day, they ran into the tail of a monsoon; the lower decks were swamped and the steerage passengers were sent on to the upper decks, where Marcella and Louis sat surrounded by half a dozen forlorn children whose parents had succumbed to the pitching ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... dreamy. Perhaps it was because of the impression made upon him by the sudden apparition of those great dark eyes and sable curls, that he now thought of the boy that he had found floating that afternoon, looking as if some tropical flower had been washed landward by a monsoon; and as the boat rocked and tilted, and the minister gazed dreamily downward into the wavering rings of purple, orange, and gold which spread out and out from it, gradually it seemed to him that a face much like the child's formed ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for shipping upon the western Erythroean shore, from Suez to Guardafui. Backed by lands capable of cultivation, and by hills covered with pine and other valuable trees, enjoying a comparatively temperate climate, with a regular although thin monsoon, this harbour has been coveted by many a foreign conqueror. Circumstances have thrown it as it were into our arms, and, if we refuse the chance, another and a rival nation ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... evidently missed the Monsoon, and had to await its return. From this kingdom or division of the island, it probably acquired the name of Sumatra, by which it is known in modern geography. From the circumstance in the text ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... were said by the natives to kill small birds, mice, &c. The Lepcha name he gives is Kalli-tang-zhing. McMaster in his notes writes: "The Burmese Tupaia is a harmless little animal; in the dry season living in trees and in the monsoon freely entering our houses, and in impudent familiarity taking the place held in India by the common palm squirrel. It is, however, probably from its rat-like head and thievish expression, very unpopular. I have found them in rat-traps, however, so possibly they deserve to ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... separated by 1,600 km left the Bengalis marginalized and dissatisfied. East Pakistan seceded from its union with West Pakistan in 1971 and was renamed Bangladesh. About a third of this extremely poor country floods annually during the monsoon rainy season, ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... Jove! he was a noble fellow, Johnson, And though his name, than Ajax or Achilles, Sounds less harmonious, underneath the sun soon We shall not see his likeness: he could kill his Man quite as quietly as blows the monsoon Her steady breath (which some months the same still is): Seldom he varied feature, hue, or muscle, And could be very ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... cool, dry winter (October to March); hot, humid summer (March to June); cool, rainy monsoon ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... not know, as he studied her, how this innocent maid from Macassar was destined to play an important and significant part in his life, entering and leaving it like a gentle and caressing afternoon monsoon. His guess, as he looked away, was that she was a woman of no caste, from her garb; probably a river girl; more than likely, worse. Yet there was an undeniable air of innocence and youth in her narrow shoulders as she slowly rocked. Peter could see the tips of bright-red ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... that happened at certain periods, and were still more alarming, for they lasted twelve hours. These were gales of wind, called in the Chinese seas Tay-Foung. At several periods of the year, particularly at the moment of the change of the monsoon, [3] we beheld still more terrifying phenomena than our storms—I allude to the earthquakes. These fearful convulsions of nature present a very different aspect in the country from what they do in cities. If in towns the earth begins ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... Dewan Sahib loves him. Any foe of England is as welcome to the Dewan as the monsoon rain to the ryot whose crops are dying of drought. Thou wilt see this one, for he is ever with the Dewan, who has ordered that thou goest to him before seeing ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... extra layer of leaves over the ridgepole as a protection against the rain. Occasionally a long strip or two of bark is placed as a hood on the ridgepole to help prevent the entrance of the rain during the northwest monsoon, when it comes down in ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... he muttered. I became extremely buoyant. "Just a moment." I grunted pleasantly. He took a few steps here and there. "That's over," I heard him say. A single distant clap of thunder came from the sea like a gun of distress. "The monsoon breaks up early this year," he remarked conversationally, somewhere behind me. This encouraged me to turn round, which I did as soon as I had finished addressing the last envelope. He was smoking greedily in the middle of the room, and though he heard the stir I made, he remained with his back ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... company with the Lady Nelson, should proceed to the northward along the Australian coast and then to the westward, if it were possible, to examine the Gulf of Carpentaria before the November following when the north-west monsoon might be expected. ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... sea front at night in front of the big German hospital that now houses our surgical cases, you will find these invalids walking past the cemetery where the "good Huns" sleep, sitting on the beach, enjoying the cool sea breeze that sweeps into the town on the North-East Monsoon. ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... punkahs. There is nobody I know on board and though they are quite a pleasant lot they don't call for special comment. The C.O. is a genial major of the Norfolks. He did some star turns the first two days. There was a heavy monsoon swell on, and the boat rolled so, you could hardly stand up. However the Major, undaunted, paraded about a score of men who had squeaked on to the ship after the roll-call at Bombay. These were solemnly drawn up in a line as defaulters ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... therefore, hardly be matter of doubt, that great permanent currents, caused by the unequal heating of the equatorial and polar regions, do exist in the higher strata of the atmosphere—an inference which is supported not only by the occurrence of the trade-winds and the monsoon, but by a variety of other ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... The monsoon blew with extreme violence during all the next morning. The wind buried itself in the lower cavities of the balloon and shook the appendage by which the dilating-pipes entered the main apparatus. They had, ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... had hitherto prevailed was not to continue. The south-west monsoon had begun to blow, and the sea got up, washing over the bows and flying-deck, and giving ample occupation to all hands in baling out the water as fast as it broke on board. It was impossible to spread the ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... and gave a very great superiority to Egypt, which was increased by the canals dug in that country, and the discovery of the regular monsoon, (a periodical wind,) which, at a certain time of the year, carried navigators straight from the mouth of the Red Sea to the Malabar ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... away from it, to all sides, in the winter time. That's what causes the famous Indian monsoons, which blow steadily to the north-east for the six months of summer and just as steadily to the south-west for the six months of winter. The native boats, there, are built on purpose for the monsoon, so that they can only sail with a fair wind and they make one round trip a year, going south with the monsoon in winter and returning with ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... without which all animal and vegetable life would perish. It draws from the ocean a current of wind laden with moisture which blows steadily for two months toward the northwest and causes what is called the rainy season. That wind is called the southwest monsoon. The quantity of rain that falls depends upon the configuration of the land. Any cause which cools the winds from the sea and leads to the condensation of the vapor they carry—any obstacle which blocks their course—causes ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... end of May the monsoon blows up from the Indian Ocean and from the Bay of Bengal, when a rainfall averaging about twenty inches takes place and lasts during the ensuing quarter. This usually ceases about the end of September, when the weather is at its most sickly point. Constant exhalations ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... pepper-vine, the latter intwining round its trunk, and supporting itself by the prickles on its stem; the soap-tree; the castor-oil plant; trunks of the sago palm; and various kinds of seeds unknown to the Malays settled on the islands. These are all supposed to have been driven by the N. W. monsoon to the coast of New Holland, and thence to these islands by the S. E. trade-wind. Large masses of Java teak and Yellow wood have also been found, besides immense trees of red and white cedar, and the blue gumwood of New Holland, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... perilous enterprise, for he was informed that the breaking of the monsoon occurred at the end of May or the beginning of June. This, as he came to think, was too early; but in any case, he would come very near the dangerous time. As he wrote to one of his friends, he felt jammed into a corner, and what could he do? He believed from ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... months ago that the epidemic Catarrh or Influenza spread throughout the land, travelling like the Cholera in India, when it went up the monsoon, without regard to the East wind; and what could be more likely than the blighting drying process of such a wind, in either the one or the other case, to prepare the body for falling under the influence of whatever disease might be afloat in the atmosphere. ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... the fleet shall have engaged the enemy, or pursued him outside these islands, it must return to the islands as soon as possible after the desired end has been attained. Should the weather not permit the return voyage until the coming of the monsoon, then he [Morga] shall endeavor to preserve, provide, and equip the fleet with all needful things, at his Majesty's expense, in order that his voyage may be made with the greatest promptness and security possible. Given in the city of Manila, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... that he was far from the saw-mills of the Golden State. So he raised his nose to heaven and there, afloat above him in the serene blue, was the explanation. It was a kite, a great locust-shaped kite, darting and swooping in the hot monsoon, and from it, dropping plumb, came the ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... at the country-house of the Hamburgh consul, Herr Wattenbach, intending only to draw upon his hospitality for a few days, and to leave as soon as possible, in order to take advantage of the monsoon {225} in my passage through the Arabian and Persian seas. Days, however, grew into weeks, for the favourable time was already past, and the opportunity of meeting with ship ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... spread to a S.W. monsoon we rapidly speed over that glorious expanse of luminous sea where it is ever summer, and in whose pearly depths living things innumerable revel in the very joy ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... day, when the last flicker of the far southeast trade was fading out and the seasonal change for the northwest monsoon was coming on, the Kittiwake lifted above the sea-rim the jungle-clad ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... into existence in 1971 when Bengali East Pakistan seceded from its union with West Pakistan. A third of this desperately poor country annually floods during the monsoon rainy season, ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Nevertheless the persistency of Mendes and his men seems to have greatly influenced Albuquerque, for finding in Feb. 1511, when he sailed out of Goa harbour, that it was impossible to sail westward owing to the monsoon, he resolved to make his way to Malacca. He first sailed to Cochin, where he appointed Manoel de Lacerda to be Captain of the Indian Sea with supreme authority, and he directed that Lacerda's orders should be obeyed as if they were ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... monsoon expedited our voyage, and we cut the equator on the 21st of January, in the longitude 253 deg. 38'; then passing between the islands of Sumatra and Java, we reached the ocean, after having safely traversed the Chinese Sea from its northern to its southern boundary, and directed our ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... on the Swallow, a spanker she was, chartered by the Company, London to Calcutta. There was none of the doldrums that trip, dodged 'em fair an' square; a topsail breeze to the Cape, and then the fust of the monsoon to the Hugli. We lay maybe a couple of months at Calcutta, when what should I do but take aboard a full dose of the cramp, just as the Swallow was in a manner of speakin' on the wing. Not but what it sarved me ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... poles, an attempt to set a rag of umbrella having ended in its being blown out of the bolt-ropes, and the aforesaid tender Jewel was now in the vicarage harbour of refuge, reflecting what an awful job it would have in beating back against the monsoon. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... have quaffed the rich sherbet, Regal Montepulciano drained beneath its native rock, On Johannis' sunny mountain frequent hiccuped o'er my hock; I have bathed in butts of Xeres deeper than did e'er Monsoon, Sangaree'd with bearded Tartars in the Mountains of the Moon; In beer-swilling Copenhagen I have drunk your Danesman blind, I have kept my feet in Jena, when each bursch to earth declined; Glass for glass, in fierce Jamaica, I have shared the planter's ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... be from 12 to 15 inches in length, and as thick as a man's little finger. These castings were collected by Dr. King after a period of 110 days without any rain; and they must have been ejected either during the north-east or more probably during the previous south-west monsoon; for their surfaces had suffered some disintegration and they were penetrated by many fine roots. A drawing is here given (Fig. 4) of one which seems to have best retained its original size and appearance. ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... fight against the decrees of fate. Yes, I fought with those you call your friends to-day, and drove them before me till after sundown. My men are following them now to complete the pursuit, scattering them like dead leaves before the blast which heralds the monsoon. You heard ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... he, 'the monsoon will in a little time bring ships for ivory. I will send you home then, and give you wherewith to pay your expenses.' I thanked him again for my liberty, and his good intentions towards me. I stayed with him until the monsoon; and during ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... refused to work. Along the north and south lines a current of electricity was constantly passing, which threw the needles out of gear and baffled the signallers. Moreover, the tremendous thunder-storms ran up and down the wires and melted the conductors; the monsoon winds tore the teak-posts out of the sodden ground; the elephants and buffaloes trampled the fallen lines into kinks and tangles; the Delta aborigines carried off the timber supports for fuel, and the wires or iron rods upon them to make bracelets and to supply the Hindoo smitheries; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... Australia, Sturt fondly hoped that once past the southern zone of the tropics, he would find himself in a country blessed with a heavier and more constant rainfall; as it was impossible for him to know at that time, that the force of the north-west monsoon was expended on the northern coast, and none of the tropical deluge found its way with any degree of regularity to the thirsty inland slope; this theory appeared on the face of it, feasible. Although an after knowledge may have now enabled us to see the mistakes ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... "natives," sepoys, byle-gharies,[10] camels, monkeys, kites, squirrels, bulbuls, minahs,[11] mongooses, palm-trees, and temples. Cattle appeared to have no humps, crows to have black heads, and trees to have no fruit. The very monsoon seemed inextricably mixed with the cold season. Fancy the rains coming in the cold weather! Perhaps there was no hot weather and nobody went to the hills in this strange country of strange people, strange ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... separated from the island of Battam by the Rhio Strait, was first thought of; but we were too late in occupying it. Then the Carrimon Islands were suggested by the Resident Councillor of Malacca, at that time Major Farquhar; but the harbour was too exposed to the prevailing monsoon. Subsequently Tanjong Jatti, on the island of Bengkalis, was deemed to be a suitable site, but this had its objection as to situation; and after coasting about these seas for some little time, Sir Stamford Raffles finally fixed upon the ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... hundred miles long and forty broad, and has numerous deep inlets along the northern coast, where ships may anchor during the good or south-east monsoon. A chain of mountains, from which a number of rivers descend to the sea, runs down the centre, and divides the island into two parts. The air is cooled by the sea-breezes, which, as in the West Indies, set in every day. The soil is particularly rich. It is cultivated by buffaloes, ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... which should have been north hung obstinately at south. Whether for natural productions, or weather, or society, we were commonly three months too late or two months too soon; or, as one of "ours" put it, we should have come in the other monsoon. Nevertheless, it was impossible for youth and high spirits to follow our schedule and not find it spiced to the full with the enjoyment of novelty; if not in ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... south-west monsoon and the stormy season that accompanies the change of monsoons, the roadstead is unsafe. Larger vessels are then obliged to seek protection in the port of Cavite, seven miles further down the coast; but ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... Francisco Serrao and Simao Affonso, in command of two of the vessels. The pilots were Luis Botim, Goncalo de Oliveira, and Francisco Rodriguez or Roiz. Abreu left Malacca in November, 1511, at which season the westerly monsoon begins to blow. He steered a south-easterly course, passed through the Strait of Sabong, and having arrived at the coast of Java, he cast anchor at Agacai, which Valentijn identifies with Gresik, near Sourabaya. At Agacai, Javan pilots were engaged for the voyage ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... after this calamity, the monsoon rains began to fall. The clouds gathered in dense masses upon the neighbouring hills, and poured down such copious showers that the mountain streams were turned into roaring avalanches, tearing their way down to the sea with an impetuosity that ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... solitary cone of the Chambhar Hill, embosoming the great Jain caves of the 12th century. Beyond the Chambhar cone climb heavenwards the castellated pinnacles of the Chandor range, mist-shrouded in this monsoon season. In the nearer distance the primeval Brahman settlement of Govardhan sleeps amid her mango-groves, and opposite to it the modern Christian village of Sharanpur marks the threshold of that tract of fair ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... Himalaya there is a rise of nearly 28,000 feet in about seventy miles. The lower part is in the 26th degree of latitude, so that the heat is tropical. And as the region comes within the sweep of the monsoon from the Bay of Bengal, there is not only great heat in the plains and lower valleys, but great moisture as well. The mountain-sides are in consequence ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... spots as big as woodpeckers' nests—flapped heavily about on impotent tacks, and when the sun rose we found ourselves on the same spot from which we had watched its setting. Toward ten o'clock, however, the monsoon veered, and, wing-and-wing, the old boat, creaking in every joint as if she had the dengue, grunted her way over flashing combers with a speed that seemed almost indecent. Then, just as we were getting near enough ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... I found that the heavy weather experienced during the last north-west monsoon had caused her to ride heavily, and that her decks forward had, as a consequence, strained a little. The necessary repairs are being effected by one of the crew, who is a practical shipwright. I propose in future to keep a carpenter in lieu ...
— Report on the Department of Ports and Harbours for the Year 1890-1891 • Department of Ports and Harbours
... the south-east, followed by gentle breezes from the east and north-east. North-easters begin in September and are intermittent until the beginning of the wet season. The south-east monsoons are regular and consistent; the north-east, which precede the rainy monsoon, fitful and wayward, never continuing long in one stay, and lasting but four out of the twelve months. Rare is the wind from the west, rarer from the south-west. North-easters are a pronounced feature. They work up by diurnal and easy grades from ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... book—Almayer, his wife, his daughter, and Dain, the daughter's native lover—are well drawn, and the parting between father and daughter has a pathetic naturalness about it, unspoiled by straining after effect. There are, too, some admirably graphic passages in the book. The approach of a monsoon is most effectively described.... The name of Mr. Joseph Conrad is new to us, but it appears to us as if he might become the ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... in size to the Brahmapootra, has one great advantage. It depends mainly on the monsoon rains for its supply, while the Brahmapootra not only has a longer course to run, but relies for its floods, to a great extent, on the melting of the snow, so that, arriving later at the scene of the struggle, it finds the country already occupied by the ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... manner they are kept fresh until spring, when they are sown thickly in some corner of the farm, from which they are afterwards transplanted. When about a year old, they are from nine inches to a foot in height, and ready for transplanting. This is always done at the change of the monsoon in spring, when fine warm showers are of frequent occurrence. The most favourable situations are on the slopes of the hills, as affording good drainage, which is of the utmost importance; and which, on the plains, is attained by having the lands above the watercourses. Other things being equal, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... some of the Islands lying about the N.E. part of Celebes, but were satisfied soon after that we were in the Straits of Guiana. 18th May passed several Islands, and the South point of Gillolo. This was the time of the S.E. Monsoon, which made Weather and Wind very uncertain. May 25th we fell in with a parcel of Islands to the Eastward of Bouton, an island where there is a kind of Indian King, very Savage and Warlike, and with a considerable flotilla of Galleys. We traded with him, and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... of foliage Colombo.—January—long shore wind February—cold nights (note) March, April May—S.W. monsoon Aspect of the country before it Lightning Rain, its violence June July and August, September, October, November. N.E. monsoon December Annual quantity of rain in Ceylon and Hindustan (note) Opposite climates of the same mountain Climate of Galle Kandy and ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... a Greek sailor, Hippalus, found out that by using the monsoons at the appropriate times, he could sail direct from Arabia to India without laboriously coasting along the shores of Persia and Beluchistan, and in consequence the Greeks gave his name to the monsoon. For information about India itself, the Greeks were, for a long time, dependent upon the account of Megasthenes, an ambassador sent by Seleucus, one of Alexander's generals, to the Indian king ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... the natives of Vansittart Bay. Leave the coast at Cassini Island for Coepang. Obliged to bear up for Savu. Anchor at Zeeba Bay, and interview with the rajah. Some account of the inhabitants. Disappointed in not finding water. Leave Zeeba Bay, and beat back against the monsoon to Coepang. Complete wood and water, and procure refreshments. Return to Port Jackson. Pass the latitude assigned to the Tryal ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... fears of those immediately round could procure by pressing outwards. The foremost of these vast columns are fat, and the rear exceedingly lean, while the direction continues one way; but with the change of the monsoon, when they return towards the north, the rear become the leaders, fattening in their turn, and leaving the others to starve, and to be devoured by the numerous rapacious animals, who follow their march. At all times, when impelled ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... some mighty king of France—of some splendid queen—has come Jean Croisset. I have always felt that, and yet I can trace him no farther than a hundred years back, to the quarter-strain wife of the white factor at Monsoon. Jean has lost interest in himself now—since his wife died three years ago. Has Josephine told you ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... wing of the condor shades the crow. Byron's "sound of revelry by night" is the throbbing of a snare drum drowned in Hugo's thunders of Mont St. Jean. Danton's rage sinks to an inaudible whisper, and even Aeschylus shrivels before that cataclysm of Promethean fire; that celestial monsoon. It stirs the heart like the rustle of a silken gonfalon dipped in gore, like the whistle of rifle-balls, like the rhythmic dissonance of a battery slinging shrapnel from the heights of Gettysburg into the ragged legions of General Lee. I have counseled my ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... flag somewhat all round and then the others got on to talking about accidents at sea, ships lost in a fog, goo collisions with icebergs, all that sort of thing. Shipahoy of course had his own say to say. He had doubled the cape a few odd times and weathered a monsoon, a kind of wind, in the China seas and through all those perils of the deep there was one thing, he declared, stood to him or words to that effect, a pious medal he had ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the Flood come along for an extra monsoon, 'Twas Noah constructed the first pontoon To the plans ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... generally, the climate of the Andamans themselves may be described as normal for tropical islands of similar latitude. It is warm always, but tempered by pleasant sea-breezes; very hot when the sun is northing; irregular rainfall, but usually dry during the north-east, and very wet during the south-west monsoon. Not only does the rainfall at one place vary from year to year, but there is an extraordinary difference in the returns for places quite close to one another. The official figures in inches for the station at Port Blair, which ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... over the events of the next few days. The north-east monsoon showing signs of beginning to blow in earnest, the commander of the brig was anxious to return to port, and accordingly with much reluctance gave up the search. Little Maria was slowly recovering. The widow bore her grief meekly and resignedly, and showed that she was a thoroughly altered ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... sea-weed floating about, and observed land-birds up to the 16th degree, both of these being signs of the proximity of the mainland. This land is a fit point to be made by ships coming here with the eastern monsoon, in order to get a fixed course for Java or Sunda Strait; for if you see this land in 21, 22 or 23 degrees, and shape your course north-north-west and north-by-west you will make the western extremity of Jaeva. I write this as a matter of certainty, seeing that we have made the same ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... soon as possible, I ordered a remedy for such disorders. For this purpose I appointed certain chief magistrates, who excused themselves, either through fear of Don Juan or dread of the sea. Things came to such a pass that, it was necessary to send by schooner, outside the monsoon season, the licentiate Ruy Machado who came from the kingdom this year, and who had been appointed to that auditorship; his adjutant was Ynacio Nunez de Mancelos, the captain of the said vessel. The latter had a few soldiers, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... after all, these things are well ordered. My wife, as one of her poor relations, good soul, intimates, is the salt of the earth, and none the less the salt of my sea, which otherwise were unwholesome. She is its monsoon, too, blowing a brisk gale over it, in the one steady ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... two primary seasons. Most of the year is hot and dry while the monsoon rains come from dune through September. During the monsoon, so much water falls so continuously that the earth becomes completely saturated. Even though the pits were under a roof, they would fill with water ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... the wrecks of the Athenian stage, is reputed the supreme artist [5] if not the most impassioned poet, with what horror he would have overwhelmed Addison, when read by the light of those principles which he had himself so scornfully applied to the opera! In the very monsoon of his raving misery, from calamities as sudden as they were irredeemable, a king is introduced, not only conversing, but conversing in metre; not only in metre, but in the most elaborate of choral metres; not only under the torture of ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... circumstance upon which their extensive utility in a great measure depends, amongst nations where the complicated science of navigation is but in a rude state. Myriads of vessels sail from their homes during one monsoon before the wind, or so nearly before it, that there is no great skill required in reaching all the ports at which they wish to touch; and when the wind shifts to the opposite quarter, they steer back again, in like manner, with a flowing sheet. Thus, with an exceedingly small portion of nautical ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... very good, but I found on one occasion, when I was stalked by a tiger, that it was most provokingly defective as compared with that of a native. The incident occurred in this way. In cloudy weather, during a break in the monsoon, I was beating a ravine for game, and had sent my second gun-carrier with the beaters. As the beat was drawing to a close, I heard a sambur deer belling at the head of a ravine, about a few hundred yards from the termination of the jungle we were beating. As I thought ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... monsoon brings rain to most of the islands, and the wet season lasts nominally six months,—from about the end of April. The other half of the year is the dry season. However, on those coasts directly facing the Pacific Ocean, the seasons are the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... rich in forests, and tigers and other wild animals are there in plenty. During the monsoon the jungle animals retreat to the higher levels of the forest-clad hills. But when the rains abate they begin to gradually descend; and when the great "hoars" or fenlands dry up at the approach of the cold ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... rainy, hot, humid summers (southwest monsoon, June to September); less cloudy, scant rainfall, mild temperatures, lower humidity during winter (northeast monsoon, ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Fly, at present employed in surveying the coast of New Holland, the Straits, and parts adjacent, has expressed his determination, after refitting at Singapore, to endeavour to enter the Pacific Ocean, during the north-west monsoon, by sailing through Torres' Straits from the westward. I trust that this enterprising Officer will succeed in the attempt, and thereby put beyond question the practicability of the passage; which would not only shorten the distance between Australia and our Indian ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... surgeon had taken hurried stitches over Ranjoor Singh's ribs without probing deep enough for an Afghan bullet; that bullet burned after a long day in the saddle. And Bagh was—as the big brute's name implied—a tiger of a horse, unweakened even by monsoon weather, and his habit was to spring with terrific suddenness when ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... soft greensward, and real rain fell. Seen from the Baralacha Pass are vast snowfields, glaciers, and avalanche slopes. This barrier, and the Rotang, farther south, close this trade route practically for seven months of the year, for they catch the monsoon rains, which at that altitude are snows from fifteen to thirty feet deep; while on the other side of the Baralacha and throughout Rupchu and Ladak the snowfall is insignificant. So late as August, when I crossed, there were four perfect snow bridges over the Bhaga, and snowfields thirty-six ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... These vessels spent a complete year in their voyage, that is, sailed one year, sojourned another, and did not return till the third. This tediousness was owing first to their cruising from port to port, as they do at present; secondly, to their being detained by the Monsoon currents; and thirdly, because, according to the calculations of Pliny and Strabo, it was the ordinary practice among the ancients to spend three years in a voyage of twelve hundred leagues. Such a commerce must have been very expensive, particularly as they were obliged to ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... the tropics; but the weather is now colder again, and not nearly so pleasant as it was two days ago. I suppose it is owing to the north-east monsoon. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Siam is more or less hot according to the latitude; only continual bathing can render it endurable. There are but two seasons, the wet and the dry. As soon as the southwest monsoon sets in, masses of spongy cumuli gather on the summits of the western mountains, giving rise to furious squalls about sunset, and dispersing in peals of thunder and torrents of refreshing rain. From the beginning to the end of the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... the climate leaves little to be desired. The temperature generally varies between 70 and 90 degrees all the year round, though there is a certain amount of difference between one island and another. North of the equator the rainy monsoon lasts from October to April, and the dry season from April to October, while on the south side these seasons are reversed. On the line, however, the trade-winds and monsoons appear very irregularly, because there are four seasons instead of two—that is to ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... there? Monsoon won't go, even if they ask him. The Paragon was just the fellow for it. He had his heart in the work. An immense deal depends on what sort of man we have in Patagonia at the present moment. If Paraguay gets the better of the Patagonese all Brazil will be in a ferment, and you know ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... undulating and well wooded, and the country around studded with well-built and substantial houses, belonging to the European merchants and other officials in Singapore. No Europeans live in the town, as the heat there during the south-west and even north-east monsoon is insupportable. The Esplanade, which faces the sea, and near to which our hotel stood, is the fashionable drive, and where the inhabitants enjoy the sea-breezes when the heat of the day is over. ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... seasons as in temperate zones but only the distinction of dry and rainy ones, the former being determined by the monsoon blowing from the east, and the latter from that coming ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... and the wet. The first extends from November to February or March, when the atmosphere is bracing rather than cold. The hot season lasts from March to June, and the heat becomes very oppressive before the beginning of the southerly monsoon. Thunder-storms of terrific violence occur during May and June. The wet season begins with heavy rains, known by the natives as "collas," and until the end of October ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... the top of the beautiful valley of the Sind river, a tributary of the Jhelam. The lofty Zanskar range blocks the inward flow of the monsoon, and once the Zojila is crossed the aspect of the country entirely changes. The land of forest glades and green pastures is left behind, and a region of ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... down, the north-west monsoon giving place to the south-east Trades; bogs dry up everywhere, opening all roads; travellers pass through the stations from all points of the compass—cattle buyers, drovers, station-owners, telegraph ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... man-of-war which drove me to Singapore, I sailed in a fine fleet of prahus belonging to the Rajah of Johore [Sultan Mahmad Shah]. We were all then very rich—ah! such numbers of beautiful wives and such feasting!—but, above all, we had a great many most holy men in our force! When the proper monsoon came, we proceeded to sea to fight the Bugismen [of Celebes] and Chinamen bound from Borneo and the Celebes to Java; for you must remember our Rajah was at war with them. (Jadee always maintained that the proceedings in which he had been engaged partook ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... grief driven to frenzy, is essential to the ventilation of profound natures. A sea which is deeper than any that Count Massigli[3] measured cannot be searched and torn up from its sleeping depths without a levanter or a monsoon. A nature which is profound in excess, but also introverted and abstracted in excess, so as to be in peril of wasting itself in interminable reverie, cannot be awakened sometimes without afflictions that go ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... might produce penitence or amendment, are unable to pursue the rapidity of their flight. Their prey is lodged in England; and the cries of India are given to seas and winds, to be blown about, in every breaking up of the monsoon, over a remote and unhearing ocean. In India all the vices operate by which sudden fortune is acquired: in England are often displayed, by the same persons, the virtues which dispense hereditary ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... deeply. "Your face is not familiar to me, but you will permit me to introduce myself—Major Monsoon, of ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... an entrancing country is this Ceylon! The monsoon is upon us, and hinders my journey: indeed, Mr. Eversleigh advises me not to start for some weeks. He promises to accompany me to the Peak if I can wait, but the suspense is hard to bear. Meantime I am drinking in the marvels of Colombo. The ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the rhinoceros is well described. Samara: this I suppose to be Samar-langa, likewise on the northern coast, and noted for its bay. Here, he says, the expedition, consisting of two thousand persons, was constrained to remain five months, waiting the change of the monsoon; and, being apprehensive of injury from the barbarous natives, they secured themselves, by means of a deep ditch, on the land side, with its extremities embracing the port, and strengthened by bulwarks of timber. With provisions they were supplied in abundance, particularly the finest fish. There ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... ship. Some time later, when the favorable monsoon blew for their return homeward, Sidi Ali Ghaiath thought upon his departure. He went to see the King, laden with a present which consisted of two golden ducks, male and female, enriched with precious stones, and in a ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... is no longer able to hold the same quantity of water in solution, and the superabundant quantity precipitates in rain. Hence likewise the prodigious rains in all warm latitudes at the changes of the monsoon. The observation of Columbus respecting clearing away the woods has been verified in several West ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... early days of June, when the air was so still and oppressive that you could scarcely breathe. These sultry days are the lull before the storm—the pause before the moisture-laden clouds of the monsoon roll over the land 'rugged and brown,' and the wild rattle of thunder and the lurid glare of quivering never-ceasing lightning herald in the annual rains. The manufacture however deserves a chapter ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... MONSOON originally denoted a periodical wind in the Indian Ocean, which blows from SW. from April to October, and from NE. from October to April; now denotes any wind connected with a continent regularly ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... always fell light, contrary to the usual course; and so it continued until it got to the westward, and then it freshened. In consequence of the delay occasioned by this state of things, and the near approach of the north-east monsoon, the captain, on the 21st of October, resolved to call at Penang, for the purpose of taking in an additional supply of water and other necessaries. They accordingly steered their course thither. On the 24th they saw the Island of Sumatra, bearing east-north-east ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... the effect that 'more than two thousand years ago' there were troubles in the country which was known as Babylonia, and that thereon a vast horde of Persians came down to Bushire, where they took ship and were driven by the north-east monsoon to the east coast of Africa, where, according to the legend, 'the sun and fire worshippers' fell into conflict with the belt of Arab settlers who even then were settled on the east coast, and finally broke their way through them, and, vanishing into the interior, were ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... to be struck, and with the forge and oven carried back to the ship; I also laid in about two thousand cocoa-nuts, which I had experienced to be so powerful a remedy for the scurvy, and the next day I weighed, hoping, that before we should get the length of the Bashe Island, the N.E. monsoon would be set in. I stood along the shore to take in the beef-hunters; but we had very little wind this day and the next till the evening, when it came to the westward and blew fresh: I then stood to the northward till the morning of the 3d, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... course, with myriad sea-flowers strewn, Was o'er Formosa's waves of purple dulse, Rising and falling like a fevered pulse, Moved by the hot and southern born monsoon, I saw the sapphire ...
— In Macao • Charles A. Gunnison
... land whose dreams are made reality As swift as clouds are made when the young Monsoon is in the South. A land that is born of the sea and by it destined e'er to be Beyond all fear of ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... calm period of the northeast monsoon,—February, March and April,—when the sea is flat and the sky is bright and unflecked, that the fishery is carried on. The line of banks—they are "paars," in the languages of Ceylon—cover an extensive submarine plateau off the island's ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... the beginning of the sixteenth century. Arab sheiks then held a few of the coast villages, ruling over a mixed race, nominally Mohammedan, and trading with the Bantu tribes of the interior. The vessels of these Arabs crossed the Indian Ocean with the monsoon to Calicut and the Malabar coast, and the Indian goods they carried back were exchanged for the gold and ivory which the natives brought down. The principal race that held the country between the Limpopo and the Zambesi was that which the Portuguese called Makalanga ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... rule from the eighth to the twelfth centuries, the Arabs took a keen interest in land traffic, conquest, and exploration. They were of small account at sea; it took them some time to turn to their own purposes Hippalus' discovery (in the second century A.D.) of the monsoon in the Indian Ocean; but, on land, Moslem travellers and writers—generally following in the wake of their armies, but sometimes pressing on ahead of them—did not a little to enlarge the horizon ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... such a point that he sent this year, as exiles to Manilla, even the infirm and leprous Christians of the before-mentioned cities of Cami; and already more than ninety of them are at Nangasaqui, awaiting the monsoon, and others are expected to go. With this, under the holy benediction of your ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... For the first time in many months the East Coast slept unseen by the stars under a veil of motionless cloud that, driven before the first breath of the rainy monsoon, had drifted slowly from the eastward all the afternoon; pursuing the declining sun with its masses of black and grey that seemed to chase the light with wicked intent, and with an ominous and gloomy steadiness, as though ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... of wisdom slowly shook his head. "Everything is lost through this shillyshallying timidity, called prudence," cried Paul Jones, starting to his feet; "to be effectual, war should be carried on like a monsoon, one changeless determination of every particle towards the one unalterable aim. But in vacillating councils, statesmen idle about like the cats'-paws in calms. My God, why was I not born ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... the Meghaduta (Cloud Messenger) of Kalidas a famous description of the burst of the Monsoon begins with the words: On ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... Cabin" campaign of 1840 to remark that "Pleasure trips to these Falls appear to be quite the go. Large parties of ladies and gentlemen have passed up on the steamboats Loyal Hanna and Malta. And we noticed in a late St. Louis paper, the advertisements of the Valley Forge, Ione, Brazil and Monsoon, all for 'pleasure excursions to St. Peters'. We see also in the same paper, that the steamboat Fayette is advertised 'for Harrison and Reform'—rather an extensive country we should think, at the present ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... the north end of Luconia, and endeavour to fetch Macao, in China, though we were a little doubtful about fetching the latter in so leewardly a vessel. It appeared from the winds that we then had, that the south-west monsoon at times blows very strong through the opening between the islands of Mindanao and Celebes, and reaches a considerable way to the eastward; I can with certainty say as far as 142 deg. 00' ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter |
