Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/238

tering climate. This is caused by the continuance of a cold wind, which blows from the south over the humid forests that extend without interruption from north of the equator to the eighteenth parallel of latitude in Bolivia. I had, unfortunately, no thermometer with me at Ega; the only one I brought with me from England having been lost at Pará. The temperature is so much lowered, that fishes die in the river Teffé, and are cast in considerable quantities on its shores. One year I saw and examined numbers of these benumbed and dead fishes. They were all small fry of different species of Characini. The wind is not strong; but it brings cloudy weather, and lasts from three to five or six days in each year. The inhabitants all suffer much from the cold, many of them wrapping themselves up with the warmest clothing they can get (blankets are here unknown), and shutting themselves in-doors with a charcoal fire lighted. I found, myself, the change of temperature most delightful, and did not require extra clothing. It was a bad time, however, for my pursuit, as birds and insects all betook themselves to places of concealment, and remained inactive. The period during which this wind prevails is called the "tempo da friagem," or the season of coldness. The phenomenon, I presume, is to be accounted for by the fact that in May it is winter in the southern temperate zone, and that the cool currents of air travelling thence northwards towards the equator, become only moderately heated in their course, owing to the intermediate country being a vast, partially-flooded plain, covered with humid forests.