4 THE AMAZON AND MADEIEA RIVERS. 
inid Ocarii it sometiiiies fails to make its a])poararioo at all, to the 
groat niisory of the population. Then the eoimtry looks like a desert ; 
the trees lose their leaves; the grass on the C!ampos seems to he 
burnt up, and the mortality is greatly increased, until tlic first shower 
brings hack health and life to everything and eveiy one. In most of 
the other parts, almost all the trees and shrubs preserve their foliage 
during the drj^ season, though they all suffer more or less, and would 
do so more if they were not refreshed every night by a profuse doAV. 
In the southern provinces, where the climate assumes more and 
more the character of the temperate zone, the rains set in in winter; 
that is, in June, July, and August; and the hot season is identical 
with the diy one ; A\diile, on the border of the t\\m zones — in some 
parts of the jirovinee of Parana, for example — two rainy’' seasons may 
be distinguished ; the first in January and February, and the second 
in Septemhei-. 
In Rio de Janeiro and its environs, the annual rain-fall amounts 
to 50 inches ; but at the month of the Amazon, Avith its endless virgin 
forests, its immense water-sheets, and the rapid evaporation under a 
gloAving sun, it amounts to no less than 200 inches, being more than 
six times the average quantity in Europe. 
On the whole, the climate may be called a healthy one, Avith the 
exception of a few riA'erine plains, such as the liio Docc, Mucuiy, and 
some of the affluents of the Amazon, Avhieh are plagued Avith inter- 
mittent fevers. The ymllow fever, AAdiich first caused great havoc at 
Rio de Janeiro, in 1850, reappears there almost CA'ciy year since then, 
and has evmi increased in intensity of late ; but Brazilians and acclima- 
tized Europeans Avill ea.sily^ escape it by a sober, regular mode of life. 
New arriAuils, it is true, incur great danger ; and I should advise e\miy 
one Avho has not lived for years under the tropics, to shoAV his back, 
in yelloAV-fever time, to the cities on the seaboard, and to live in the 
interior until the tenable visitor is gone. Even now, at the German 
colony of Petropolis, distant only’ some eight leagues from Rio, but 
2,500 feet above the sea-level, one is perfectly^ safe from it, as it 
ahvay’s keeps near the coast, AA’ithin a narrow range. But not so 
the cholera. Although here, as overyAvherc, it pursues especially the 
higliAvays of commerce, and has its favourite haunts in populous 
towns, yet there is not one place (be it ever so much out of the Avay) 
in all South America, since its first visit in 1852, AA'here one can 
