Page:Campbell's new revised complete guide and descriptive book of Mexico (IA campbellsnewrevi00camp).pdf/14

8 and does not in the winter. The rainy season commences in May or June, and lasts until October and sometimes into November. The altitude, the showers, the cooling breezes from the snow mountains make a perfect sum- mer climate, and a healthful one. Fevers peculiar to the tropics are known only in the het lands of the immediate coast, and never experienced on the elevated table-lands or even on the slopes sixty miles from the coast. The mean temperature of the het lands is about 80°; of the interior table- lands, as in the capital and principal cities, 70°, and the higher elevations 60°. Make your outings in Mexico generally in the morning and you will avoid the showers that nearly always come up in the afternoons of sum- mer, and winds blowing dust and sand after mid-day in winter. A more perfectly delightful climate is hardly possible to imagine, and possibly exists in few other countries,

Rivers—The rivers of Mexico are more dignified by the appellation than, from the amount ot waier flowing within their banks. They are little more

ROPE BRIDGE.

than creeks, but as to length they are entitled to be called rivers. With the exception of the Rio Panuco, and one or two others, the rivers of Mexico are not navigable, and then only for a short distance from their mouths. The lack of tributaries, and the immense amount of water drawn off for irrigating purposes, is the reason given for the small size of the streams, For the most part they are, during the winter, but straggling brooks, or it may be, their beds are completely dry, but in the rainy sea-