CENTRAL AMERICAN RAINFALL. 
15 
to Cape Gracias a Dios, the wet northers occur in the winter 
months and bring rain. 
Passing inland to the mahogany districts, and therefore at 
no great elevation and not far from the coast, the invierno 
proper resumes sway and heavy rains begin in the latter part 
of May or in June. The mahogany cutters must “truck” 
their logs to the river in the dry, to float them in the wet 
season, and they must not be left exposed long without cov¬ 
ering or they will “ check.” 
Squier says (op. cit., p. 197): “ In the months of April and 
May, all the various preparations having been completed 
and the dr}^ season having become sufficiently advanced, 
the ‘trucking’ commences in earnest. This may be said to 
be the mahogany cutters’ harvest, as the result of his season’s 
work depends upon a continuance of the dry weather, for a 
single shower of rain would materially injure his roads.” 
And again, as to the floating, he says (p. 198): “About 
the end of May the periodical rains again commence. The 
torrents of water discharged from the clouds are so great as 
to render the roads impassable in the course of a few hours, 
when all trucking ceases; the cattle are turned into the 
pasture and the trucks, gear, and tools, etc., are housed. 
The rain now pours down incessantly till about the middle 
of June, when the rivers swell to an immense height. The 
logs then float down a distance of 200 miles, being followed 
by the gangs in pitpans (a kind of flat-bottomed canoe) to 
disengage them from the branches of the overhanging trees, 
until they are stopped by a boom placed in some situation 
convenient to the mouth of the river.” 
At Comayagua, inland and about half way between the 
Atlantic and Pacific coasts, rain falls every month in the year, 
but in the dry season of the western versant this rain is only 
in showers of brief duration, while during the wet season of 
that coast the Comayagua rains are long and many. Con¬ 
tinuous rains or temporales are infrequent. Snow sometimes 
falls on the high plains of Inticubat, but only in thin layers, 
which soon disappear. In my own observations the evi- 
