Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States

[725] acquaintance to be divested of those garments which would be useless to her in Anjenga—latitude 8°—and instead of charming him with the lily and the rose, to be shining in lustrous jet.

Having received on board some fresh provisions for the crew, and gotten rid of our lady and gentlemen visitors, we got under way and stood out to sea, and were still in sight of the Ghaut Mountains when the sun went down. These mountains will be lost to our view to-morrow; but before they dis appear, I have a word to say concerning them, and the fertile country of Hindostan, in which they are situated; for nature elaborates here one of her most beautiful and useful of meteorological problems. British India is the most formidable competitor of the Confederate States for the production of cotton, for the supply of the spindles and looms of the world. The problem to which I wish to call the reader's attention may be stated thus:—The Great Deserts of Central Africa produce the cotton crop of Hindostan. I have before had frequent occasion to speak of the monsoons of the East—those periodical winds that blow for one half of the year from one point of the compass, and then change, and blow the other half of the year from the opposite point. It is these monsoons that work out the problem we have in hand; and it is the Great Deserts alluded to that produce the monsoons.

On the succeeding page will be found a diagram, which will assist us in the conception of this beautiful operation of nature. It consists of an outline sketch of so much of Asia and the Indian Ocean as are material to our purpose. The Great Deserts, the Himalayas and the Ghauts, are marked on the sketch. Let the dotted line at the bottom of the sketch represent the equator, and the arrows the direction of the winds. Hindostan being in the northern tropic, the north-east monsoon or trade-wind, represented by the arrow A, would prevail there all the year round, but for the local causes of which I am about to speak. The reader will observe that this wind, coming from a high northern latitude, passes almost entirely over land before it reaches Hindostan. It is, therefore, a dry wind. It is rendered even more dry, by its passage over the Himalaya range of mountains which wring from it what little moisture