night
on the hills near Bombay.

"The heaviest annual rainfall on the globe," continued the doctor, "was
on the Khasia Hills, in India, where six hundred inches, or fifty feet,
fell in a twelvemonth. Just think of it; a depth of fifty feet of water
yearly, and of this amount five hundred inches fell in seven months,
during the southwest monsoons."

"How do they account for such heavy rains?" Ned asked.

"It is accounted for," the doctor replied, "by the abruptness of the
mountains which face the Bay of Bengal, from which they are separated by
low swamps and marshes. The winds arrive among the hills heavily charged
with the vapor they have absorbed from the wide expanse of the Indian
Ocean. When they strike the hills and are forced up to a higher
elevation, they give out their moisture with great rapidity, and the
rain falls in torrents. As soon as the clouds have crossed the mountains
the rain diminishes very much. Twenty miles further inland it drops
from six hundred to two hundred inches annually, and thirty miles
further inland it is only one hundred inches. The same conditions
prevail to a certain extent in Australia. The mountain chains are near
the coast. On the side next the ocean there is a liberal rainfall, but
on the other side, towards the interior, the rainfall is light. As the
clouds charged with vapor come from the sea to the mountains they yield
their moisture freely, but, after passing the mountains, they have
little left to yield."

The burster died away along in the evening, and, though the streets were
wet in many places, our friends went out for a stroll. During their walk
their attention was naturally drawn to the sky, which was now bright
with stars. Naturally, their conversation turned to the difference
between the night skies of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, which
had not escaped their observation during their voyage from the east
coast of Africa down to the Equator, and thence in the Southern Ocean.
On this subject Harry wrote at one time in his journal as follows:--

"We found the famous Southern Cross a good deal of a disappointment. In
the first place, it requires a considerable amount of imagination to
make a cross out of it; very much more than is needed to make 'The Great
Dipper' out of the constellation so called in the Northern Hemisphere.
The Southern Cross consists of three stars of the first magnitude, one
of the fourth magnitude, and three of the fifth, and, look at th