There has not been any rain for
three months, nor will there be any for two more; the sky is cloudless,
the air dry and very bracing.
It is cold enough at night for fires,
and autumn clothing can be worn all the day long, for though the sun is
bright and warm, the shade temperature does not rise above 65 degrees,
and exercise is easy and pleasant. At night, even at a considerable
height, the lowest temperature is 40 degrees. It is impossible to
praise the climate too highly, with its bright sky, cool dry air, and
five months of rainlessness; but I should write very differently if I
came here four months later, when the mercury ranges from 80 degrees to
90 degrees both by day and night, and the cloudy sky rests ever on the
summits of the island peaks, and everything is moist, and the rain
comes down continually in torrents, rising in hot vapors when the sun
shines, and people become limp and miserable, and their possessions
limp and moldy, and insect life revels, and human existence spent in a
vapor bath becomes burdensome. But the city is healthy to those who
live temperately. It has, however, a remarkable peculiarity. Standing
in and on rock, one fancies that fever would not be one of its
maladies, but the rock itself seems to have imprisoned fever germs in
some past age, for whenever it is quarried or cut into for foundations,
or is disturbed in any way, fever immediately breaks out.
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