August 10.
I find the summer here greatly unlike that of mine own country. The
heat is great, the sun shining very strong and bright; and for more than
a month it hath been exceeding dry, without any considerable fall of
rain, so that the springs fail in many places, and the watercourses are
dried up, which doth bring to mind very forcibly the language of Job,
concerning the brooks which the drouth consumeth: "What time they wax
warm they vanish; when it is hot they are consumed out of their place.
The paths of their way are turned aside; they go to nothing and perish."
The herbage and grass have lost much of the brightness which they did
wear in the early summer; moreover, there be fewer flowers to be seen.
The fields and roads are dusty, and all things do seem to faint and wax
old under the intolerable sun. Great locusts sing sharp in the hedges
and bushes, and grasshoppers fly up in clouds, as it were, when one
walks over the dry grass which they feed upon, and at nightfall
mosquitoes are no small torment.
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