224 THE UPPER AMAZONS. Chap. III. 



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 Para. The temperature is so much 

 lowered, that fishes die in the river TefYe, 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 wrap- 

 ping 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 in- 

 active. 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 tem- 

 perate zone, and that the cool currents of air travelling 

 thence northwards towards the equator, become only 

 moderately heated in their course, owing to the inter- 

 mediate country being a vast, partially-flooded plain, 

 covered with humid forests. 



