92 The Andes and the Amazon. 



of " the blessed, the happy, and loiig-Hved" of Anacreon.* 

 Ko torrid heat enervates the inhabitant of this favored spot ; 

 no icy breezes send him shivering to the fire. Nobody is 

 sun-struck ; nobody's buds are nipped by the frost. Stoves 

 and chimneys, starvation and epidemics, are imknown. It 

 is never either spring, summer, or autumn, but each day is 

 a combination of all three. The mean annual temperature 

 of Quito is 5 8°. 8, the same as Madrid, or as the month of 

 May in Paris. The average range in twenty four hours is 

 about 10°. The coldest hour is 6 a.m.; the warmest be- 

 tween 2 and 3 p.m. The extremes in a year are 45° and 

 70° ; those of Moscow are — 38° and 89°. It is a prevalent 

 opinion that since the great earthquake of 1797 the tem- 

 perature has been lower. " It was suddenly reduced (says 

 the Encycl.Metropolita'na) from 66° or 68° to 40° or 45°"— 

 a manifest error. The natives say that since the terremote 

 of 1859 the seasons have not commenced so regularly, nor* 

 are they so well defined ; there are more rainy days in 

 summer than before. It remains to be seen whether the 

 late convulsioti has affected the climate. 



The mean diurnal variation of the barometer is only 

 .084. So regular is the oscillation, as likewise the varia- 

 tions of the magnetic needle, that the hour may be known 

 within fifteen minutes by the barometer or compass. Such 

 is the clock-like order of Nature under the equator, that 

 even the rains, the most irregular of all meteorological phe- 

 nomena in temperate zones, tell approximately the hour of 

 the day. The winds, too, have an orderly march — the ebb 

 and flow of an aerial ocean. No wonder watch-tinkers can 



* In the mountain-town of Caxamarca, farther south, there were living in 

 1792 seven persons aged 114, 117, 121, 131, 132, 141, and 147. One of them, 

 when he died, left behind him eight hundred living descendants to mourn his 

 loss. We confess, however, that we saw very few old persons in Quito. For- 

 eigners outlive the natives, because they live a more regular and temperate 

 life- 



