Seasons of the Makanon. 583 



sometimes, and these sweepings of the watery scavenger 

 are one of the modes by which nature makes pure the air, 

 by removing the festering mass of decomposing materials, 

 washing out the stagnant water-sinks, and thus adding the 

 strangeness of health to the jungles of the Amazons val- 

 ley. The Indian who has spent the dry season on the low- 

 lands ox jplayas (sand-tlats) curing his fisli, or catching the 

 turtle, now retires before the coming flood, and perches 

 himself on some red-clay bluff here and there on the river- 

 margins; the wild animals hasten to the interior high 

 grounds ; the woods become silent, except to the lofty- 

 roosting bird ; and the traveler who drifts down this yel- 

 low road of liquid mud becomes almost oppressed with 

 the calm supremacy of the silent waters. About May the 

 waters subside, the rains diminish, the air becomes drier 

 and warmer, continuing so up to October; the mercury, 

 however, rarely having a daily average of 29°, and still 

 less frequently does it reach 30°.* 



At this season we now find the southeast winds more 

 frequent, giving always an agreeable depression to the 

 mercury ; the atmosphere of the mornings and evenings 

 is generally more clear, and the tropics show all their 

 beauty of leaf and starlight. In June, generally about 

 the 25th, there supervenes a " cold spell," comparatively 

 speaking — cold for the natives, when the mercury for three 

 or four days sinks at night as low as from 22° to 19°. • So 

 great is even this moderate depression, that the natives 

 shiver with the change, nor is the stranger beyond the 

 reach of this impression of chilliness. This change is al- 

 ways known here as the inviernito de San Juan (the lit- 

 tle, or short, winter of San Juan), because that saint's an- 

 niversary falls on the 24th of June, the time about which 



* During the months from July to October, there are often violent storms 

 of wind and rain, attended with great electric display. 



