Note 110 — PART I.—DESCRIPTION.

The rains set in with unusual severity. Rain fell for forty days continuously. With the rain were severe thunderstorms accompanied by lightning which injured some of the old buildings.110 His account of the beauty of the hill in July, when clear sunshine followed the forty days of rain, is one of the pleasantest passages in Jehángír’s Memoirs: What words of mine can describe the beauty of the grass and of the wild flowers! They clothe each hill and dale, each slope and plain. I know of no place so pleasant in climate and so pretty in scenery as Mándu in the rainy season. This month of July which is one of the months of the hot season, the sun being in Leo, one cannot sleep within the house without a coverlet, and during the day there is no need for a fan. What I have noticed is but a small part of the many beauties of Mándu. Two things I have seen here which I had seen nowhere in India. One of them is the tree of the wild plantain which grows all over the hill top, the other is the nest of the mamolah or wagtail. Till now no bird-catcher could tell its nest. It so happened that in the building where I lodged we found a wagtail’s nest with two young ones.