It was wonderful to see the revivifying effect of the rain on the parched ground. One could almost watch the grass grow. Where a few days before was only bare earth, now the herbage stood feet high. All traces of the devastating fires were washed away. On the hill-sides, fertilised by the ashes, the undergrowth sprang up more luxuriantly than ever. But it brought with it the greatest curse of the rainy season in the jungle. Every twig, every leaf, every blade of grass, harboured leeches, thin threads of black and yellow which waved one end in the air and seemed to scent an approaching prey. Walk over the grass, brush past the bushes, and a dozen of these pests fastened on you. Through the lace-holes of one's boots, between the folds of putties, down one's collar they insinuated themselves unnoticed; and you did not feel them until, bloated with blood and swollen to an enormous size, they were perceptible to the touch under the clothing. After a walk one was obliged, on returning to the bungalow, to undress and was sure to find several leeches fastened to one's body. I saw one sepoy with a leech firmly fixed in his nostril. Another time I noticed a man's shirt sleeve stained with blood from elbow to wrist, and, on examining the arm, discovered that, unknown to the sepoy, two leeches were fastened on it and had punctured veins. Sometimes hailstorms alternated with the rain. I had heard stories of the size of the hailstones in the Duars. Planters had assured me that animals were often killed and the corrugated iron roofs of the factories perforated by them. I declined to credit these assertions; although in other parts of India I have seen hailstones an inch in diameter. But one night in Buxa, while we were at dinner, a hailstorm rattled on the roof of the bungalow; and I really believe that if this had not been made of thick sheets of iron it would have been drilled through. My orderly picked up one hailstone outside and brought it in to us. We passed it from hand to hand; and then it occurred to me to measure it. It was a rectangular block of clear ice containing as a core a round, whitish hailstone of the usual size and shape; and, using the tape and compass, we found it was two and a quarter inches long, one and a half broad, and one inch thick. And this after it had lain for a few minutes on the ground and had been handled by several persons. Next day a native survey party, under the command of a European, arrived in Buxa on its way to inspect the boundary marks along the Bhutan frontier, as these are frequently moved back into our territory by the wily Bhutanese. The Englishman in charge told me that he had been caught by the fringe of this storm on the previous evening. He had only a few yards to run for shelter but put up his umbrella as he did so. It was drilled through by the hailstones as if they had been bullets. I heard afterwards of several animals killed in the hills by this storm.