Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

ON THE PACIFIC COAST 325
traveller who strays from these landmarks :
he
soon
gets bewildered among the medanos or shifting
hills of sand, and finds his grave in one of them.
To see the sun setting over this desert is like look-
ing into the red-hot mouth of a furnace, and there
is usually a lull in the wind at that hour ;
but
he
has barely disappeared when a rapid refrigeration
sets in, the night-wind sweeps over the desert, and
at daybreak the cold is as sensible (of course not
so intense) as on the paramos of the Andes.
Piura is one of the driest places in the world,
and in " winter," as it is called (December to April),
one of the hottest. Yet it is very health)-, catarrhal
complaints, caused by the violent winds charged with
sand, being the only prevalent
ones. The site is
a very curious one to have been chosen for a city.
There is a river, it is true, but for six months in the
year its bed is dry. It is now raining hard in the
Andes, where its sources are, and some time next
month the water is expected to reach Piura.
March 27, 1863. . . . We
are just now passing
through the hottest fit of weather I ever experienced.
Fancy a minimum thermometer at 85 ,
which has usually been the lowest temperature in
the twenty-four hours ever since the ist of March ;
indeed, up to the present date, it has only three
times been as low as 83 .
It is true that throughout
the same period the thermometer has never
risen higher than 89 ;
but
such sustained and
nearly uniform heat induces great languor. The
hottest part of the year is considered to be almost
past, and the months to come will get gradually
cooler. Although Piura cannot be said to have a