Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c29.t2.101

v2.c29.t2.101

Water.—This indispensable element is at an immense distance from the surface throughout the Indian desert, which, in this respect, as well as many others, differs very materially from that portion of the great African Desert in the same latitudes. Water at twenty feet, as found at Mourzook by Captain Lyon, is here unheard of, and the degree of cold experienced by him at Zuela, on the winter solstice, would “burnt up” every natural and cultivated production of our Hindu Sahara. Captain Lyon describes the thermometer in lat. 26°, within 2° of zero of Reaumur. Majors Denham and Clapperton never mark it under 40° of Fahrenheit, and mention ice, which I never saw but once, the thermometer being 28°; and then not only the mouths of our mashaks, or ‘water-skins,’ were frozen, but a small pond, protected from the wind (I heard, for I saw it not), exhibited a very thin pellicle of ice. When at 30° the cold was deemed intense by the inhabitants of Maru in the tracts limiting the desert, and the useful ak, and other shrubs, were scorched and withered; and in north lat. 25°, the thermometer being 28°, desolation and woe spread throughout the land. To use their own phrase, the crops of gram and other pulses were completely “burnt up, as if scorched by the lightnings of heaven”; while the sun’s meridian heat would raise it 50° more, or up to 80°, a degree of variability at least not recorded by Captain Lyon.