Shut up in our small Station by the relentless rain the days passed wearily during the long wet months. Often in the afternoon the rain ceased for a couple of hours; and we were able to get out for a little exercise. So steep were the slopes, so rocky the soil, that in half an hour after the cessation of the downpour the road and the parade ground were comparatively dry. But we could not wander off them without the risk of being attacked by scores of leeches. In July came a break of nearly a week. I took advantage of it to descend into the forest. Wonderful was the transformation there! No longer could I complain that there was no shelter for game. The undergrowth was higher and denser than ever. Save for an occasional blackened tree-trunk, half hidden in the greenery, there was no trace of the devastation wrought by the fires. The ashes had only served to fertilise the ground, and the vegetation pushed more vigorously than ever. Orchids again clothed the boughs. And, sporting in the unusual sunshine, myriads of gorgeous tropical butterflies, scarlet and black, peacock-green, pale blue, yellow, all the colours imaginable, rose up in clouds before my elephant. The creepers again swinging from stem to stem writhed and twisted in fantastic confusion. The rivers were in flood and rolled their masses of brown, foam-flecked water to the south. Despite the awful storms I saw no trace in the forest or the hills of damage wrought by lightning. When we arrived in Buxa I had thought the buildings well protected, as conductors ran down every chimney in bungalow and barrack. But just before the Rains an engineer of the Public Works Department had visited us to inspect them. To my alarm he informed me that none of them were properly insulated, and that so far from being a safeguard, they were a positive danger. Then, having cheered me by saying that possibly in a year or two his Department would put them to rights, he left. So when the thunderstorms broke over us I used to wonder in pained resignation which building would be the first struck. But we weathered them all successfully. Probably the hills around saved us by attracting the electric fluid.