Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/335

 THE AMAZON VALLEY. 297

CLIMATE.

The climate of the Amazon valley seems remarkable for uniformity of temperature, and for a regular supply of moisture. There are, in most parts of it, six months' wet, and six months' dry season, neither of which are so severe as in some other tropical countries. From June to December is the dry, and from January to May the wet season. In the dry season there are a few occasional rains, especially about All Saints' day, in November ; and during the wet season there are intervals of fine weather, and often bright mornings, and many days of gentle misty rain.

This is the general character of the climate over the whole of the main stream of the Amazon and its immediate neigh- bourhood. There are, however, remarkable deviations from this general routine, in particular localities. Para itself is one of these exceptional places. Here the seasons are so modified, as to render the climate one of the most agreeable in the world. During the whole of the dry season, scarcely ever more than three days or a week passes without a slight thunder- storm and heavy shower, which comes on about four in the afternoon and by six has cleared off again, leaving the atmo- sphere delightfully pure and cool and all vegetable and animal life refreshed and invigorated. Had I only judged of the climate of Para from my first residence of a year, I might be thought to have been impressed by the novelty of the tropical climate ; but on my return from a three years' sojourn on the Upper Amazon and Rio Negro, I was equally struck with the wonderful freshness and brilliancy of the atmosphere, and the balmy mildness of the evenings, which are certainly not equalled in any other part I have visited.

The wet season has not so many stormy and cloudy days as in other parts. Sunshine and rain alternate, and the days are comparatively bright and cheerful, even when rainy. Generally, the variation of the thermometer in any one day does not exceed 15 ; 75 being the lowest, and 9o°the highest. The greatest variation in one day is not, I think, ever more than 20 ; and in four years, the lowest and highest tempera- tures were 70 and 95, giving only an extreme variation of 25° A more equable climate probably does not exist on the earth. (See Diagram, Plate XL)