Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/252



HIS city of nearly three hundred thousand inhabitants lies in latitude 19° 26' north of the equator, and at an elevation above the sea of seven thousand four hundred feet. Its situation, within four degrees of the tropic of Cancer, would give it, so far as geographical position is concerned, a climate like that of Havana, without its sea breezes; but the isothermal line is here deflected northward by the greater altitude. The temperature ranges between 65 and 85 degrees, varying little with the seasons; the mornings and nights are cool, while at midday it is always hot, and the difference between sunshine and shade is very great. The climate is strictly temperate, and nowhere in the world do the periodical alternations of rain and drought occur with greater regularity.

The so-called rainy season extends from June to November, and is the most delightful period of the year, especially at its commencement and towards its termination. The latter month, November, is cool and pleasant, and indicates that the season has arrived when visitors from other countries can enter Mexico without fear of encountering deadly disease, and with the prospect before them of a full winter of dry weather. It is in May or June that "muttered thunders announce the coming of the rains, and all nature looks expectantly for the approaching showers"; the dry, brown hills take on a carpet of green in a single night; the beds of water-courses, for months without a drop of water in them, are in a few days the channels of furious streams. The animals of the hills and plains rejoice at the recurrence of the period of rain, for their pastures then afford them an abundance of succulent herbage. The eye of