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As it was there was but little rest for the weary. The longest station on the desert was thirty-one miles. This was the only time that we suffered at all with thirst. In addition to the high mean elevation of the Gobi, about four thousand feet, we had cloudy weather for a considerable portion of the journey, and, in the Kan-su district, even a heavy thunder-shower.
Although the sky was threatening all the afternoon, it was not until four o'clock that the northwest sky grew distinctly ominous and the rumble of the thunder was audible. Then Mrs. Anderson called her maid, and they proceeded to close tightly all the windows against the rising wind. "It is very dangerous indeed to have a draught in the house in a thunder-shower," Mrs.
This program was carried out to the letter, without any accident, or any nearer approach to one than a thunder-shower and squall. When the little captain saw the tempest coming down upon him, he put the boat about and run her up into the teeth of the squall.
This person is quite befuddled with mastic, which makes him inclined to be tyrannical and officious; and several times within the hour, while I wait for the never-failing thunder-shower to subside, he peremptorily dismisses both civilians and military out of the mehana yard; but the crowd always filters back again in less than two minutes.
He was an eminent citizen of Boston, born in the year 1761, and in his younger years he had learned from the writings of Franklin, who had become a philosopher, that it was dangerous to take shelter, during a thunder-shower, under a tree, or in a building not protected with lightning-rods.
I continued my ride for six miles in a north-west direction without discovering any indication of either river; on the contrary, the country was chiefly open, being beautifully variegated with clumps of picturesque trees. The weather was very hot until a thunder-shower fell and cooled the air in some degree.
In sunny spots beneath the trees, where green grass is overstrewn by the dry, fallen foliage, as I passed, I disturbed multitudes of grasshoppers basking in the warm sunshine; and they began to hop, hop, hop, pattering on the dry leaves like big and heavy drops of a thunder-shower. They were invisible till they hopped. Boys gathering walnuts.
"We are going to have a dash of a thunder-shower," thought I, still half-dreaming, half-sensible to impressions from without; and I drew the folds of my blanket closer around me, and again slept. I was awakened by a noise like thunder indeed, like the trampling of a thousand hoofs, and the lowing of a thousand oxen! The earth echoed and trembled.
I watched the sound of her retreating footsteps, or rather of her crutches, till they were no longer heard; then burying my face in my pillow, the sultry anguish of my heart was drenched in tears. Oh! what a relieving shower! It was the thunder-shower of the tropics, not the slow, drizzling rain of colder climes. I wept till the pillow was as wet as the turf on which the heavens have been weeping.
Why, as an illustration, are toads so plenty after a thunder-shower? All my life long, no one has been able to answer me that question. Why, after a heavy shower, and in the midst of it, do such multitudes of toads, especially little ones, hop about on the gravel-walks? For many years, I believed that they rained down; and I suppose many people think so still.
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