Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/163

 Senhor Cypriano was a pleasant-looking and extremely civil young Mameluco. He accompanied us, on the night of the 28th, five miles down the river to Point Jaguararí, where the man lived whom he intended to send with me. I was glad to find my new hand a steady, middle-aged, and married Indian; his name was of very good promise, Angelo Custodio (Guardian Angel).

After the 26th of September the north-west day-breeze came every morning with the same strength, beginning at ten or eleven o'clock, and ending suddenly at seven or eight in the evening. The moon was in her third quarter, and we had many successive days and nights of clear, cloudless sky. I believe this wind to be closely connected with the easterly trade-wind of the main Amazons; indeed, to be the same, reflected from the west after the land-surface in that quarter has been cooled by it to a much lower point than the sun-heated surface of the stagnant Tapajos. The wind always arose in the morning after the air in the direction of the north-west had been further cooled by radiation of heat during the night; and it ceased in the evening, when the equilibrium of temperature between the Tapajos and the Amazons had become restored. The light land breeze from the east which always began to blow soon after the strong north-wester ceased, is attributable in like manner to the wooded surface of the land being then cooler than the air on the river. The terral lasted generally from 7 until 11 p.m., but after midnight it usually veered gradually to the north-east, and blew rather freshly from that quarter towards sunrise.