xxxii THE COAST OF ECUADOR 



495 



prevails during the last half of the year and in the drizzling mists 

 that are frequent from June to October. Reference has already 

 been made to the manner in which the vegetation on this dry coast 

 of Ecuador responds to the arid conditions, as, for instance, in 

 the absence of mangroves and in the prevailing character of the 

 plants of the sea-border, cacti, thorny plants, and such like. For 

 my information on this exceedingly interesting tract of coast, which 

 is the test-ground of the Humboldt current theory, I am indebted 

 to the papers of Baron von Eggers (see end of this volume) 

 and to Mr. F. P. Walker, of the Central and South American 

 Telegraph Company's Station at Santa Elena, who very kindly 

 communicated with me by letter. Some additional remarks are 

 given in Note 73, and my own observations on the temperature 

 of the Humboldt current from Antofagasta northward are sum- 

 marised in Note 74. 



Before quitting the Ecuador coast a word may be said relating 

 to the prediction of Villavicencio that the climate of this sea-border 

 will assimilate itself to that of the rainless coasts of Peru. This is, 

 I believe, also the opinion expressed by Dr. Wolff in his Geografia 

 y Geologia del Ecuador (Leipzig, 1892); and it is referred to by 

 Mr. Webster in his article on Ecuador in the seventh volume of 

 the Encyclopedia Britannica. There is a prevailing impression 

 amongst the more observing residents that I met in the Ecua- 

 dorian province of Eloro, on the Peruvian border, that the country 

 is drying up. A few pages back I have described how in the 

 Machala district of this province the mangrove-belt passes land- 

 ward into an arid region suggestive of the sea-border of Peru. 

 This transition is startling to one who expects to find behind the 

 mangrove-belt, as he would find in most parts of the world, a 

 humid region where Nature revels in the rank luxuriance of plant- 

 growth. This is, however, not always the case, since on the lee or 

 dry sides of the large islands of Fiji the mangrove-belt is backed 

 by extensive arid plains, for an explanation of which, as 1 have 

 shown in Note 22, we have to appeal rather to the hygrometer than 

 to the rain-gauge. This is true also of Ecuador ; but whilst the 

 reason is intelligible enough in Fiji, it only carries us a step farther 

 back in the case of the Machala plains in Ecuador. These plains 

 are continuous with similar districts across the Peruvian border 

 where they reach the coast ; and if the reader will refer again to my 

 description of the section of the mangrove-belt and the plains in its 

 rear from Puerto Bolivar to Machala, he will incline to the view that 

 the desiccation of the sea-border of Ecuador is now in progress. 



