Every Day Life on a Ceylon Cocoa Estate by Mary E. Steuart

OCTOBER 28th. - The great event has at last come. This afternoon we have had a perfect deluge of rain, making me feel glad I got home before the burst, for our roads cut up very fast, which makes it heavy work for my little hackery bull; also the contents of a box carried on a man's head through pouring rain would not afterwards present the smartest of appearances. It is curious that at two places not more than thirty-five miles apart, there should have been a difference of five days in the date of the burst of the N.E. monsoon. Probably, it may be accounted for by there being a high range of mountains between the two districts.

NOVEMBER 4th. - The weather is now delightfully cool. Owing to the morning mist, we have had to give up having our early tea in the verandah, and instead take it by lamplight in the dining-room! It is only just light at muster time (5.30 a.m.) The days are perceptibly shorter, it being almost dark at six o'clock in the evening. Life would be very pleasant were it not that the insects seem to be having a perfect saturnalia. From the crickets, who chirp all night as loudly as birds do in the English springtime, down to the tiniest eyefly, all gradations put in an appearance. There are myriads of flies of sorts, and millions of ants, red, black and white. Whole flights of winged ants, who, poor, foolish creatures, cast their wings, and then quickly die. The roads are covered with these long wings, looking like the petals of strange flowers; here and there one passes a tree, a perfect hecatomb of wings at its foot, as if in their blind rush the battalions had hurled themselves against the trunk and come to terrible slaughter.