The fine season begins with a few days of brilliant weather--furious, hot sun, with passing clouds.Idle men and women, tired of the dullness and confinement of the flood season, begin to report, on returning from their morning bath, the cessation of the flow-- as agoas estao paradas, "the waters have stopped." The muddy streets, in a few days, dry up; groups of young fellows are now seen seated on the shady sides of the cottages making arrows and knitting fishing-nets with tucum twine; others are busy patching up and caulking their canoes, large and small; in fact, preparations are made on all sides for the much longed-for "verao," or summer, and the "migration," as it is called, of fish and turtle-- that is, their descent from the inaccessible pools in the forest to the main river.Towards the middle of July, the sand-banks begin to reappear above the surface of the waters, and with this change come flocks of sandpipers and gulls, which latter make known the advent of the fine season, as the cuckoo does of the European spring-- uttering almost incessantly their plaintive cries as they fly about over the shallow waters of sandy shores.Most of the gaily-plumaged birds have now finished moulting, and begin to be more active in the forest.
The fall continues to the middle of October, with the interruption of a partial rise called "repiquet" of a few inches in the midst of very dry weather in September, caused by the swollen contribution of some large affluent higher up the river.
The amount of subsidence also varies considerably, but it is never so great as to interrupt navigation by large vessels.The greater it is the more abundant is the season.Everyone is prosperous when the waters are low; the shallow bays and pools being then crowded with the concentrated population of fish and turtle.All the people-- men, women, and children-- leave the villages and spend the few weeks of glorious weather rambling over the vast undulating expanses of sand in the middle of the Solimoens, fishing, hunting, collecting eggs of turtle and plovers and thoroughly enjoying themselves.The inhabitants pray always for a "vasante grande," or great ebb.
From the middle of October to the beginning of January, the second wet season prevails.The rise is sometimes not more than about fifteen feet, but it is, in some years, much more extensive, laying the large sand islands under water before the turtle eggs are hatched.In one year, while I resided at Ega, this second annual inundation reached to within ten feet of the highest water point as marked by the stains on the trunks of trees by the river side.
The second dry season comes on in January, and lasts throughout February.The river sinks sometimes to the extent of a few feet only, but one year (1856) I saw it ebb to within about five feet of its lowest point in September.This is called the summer of the Umari, "Verao do Umari," after the fruit of this name already described, which ripens at this season.When the fall is great, this is the best time to catch turtles.In the year above mentioned, nearly all the residents who had a canoe, and could work a paddle, went out after them in the month of February, and about 2000 were caught in the course of a few days.It appears that they had been arrested in their migration towards the interior pools of the forest by the sudden drying up of the water-courses, and so had become easy prey.
Thus the Ega year is divided into four seasons; two of dry weather and falling waters, and two of the reverse.Besides this variety, there is, in the month of May, a short season of very cold weather, a most surprising circumstance in this otherwise uniformly sweltering climate.This is caused by the continuance of a cold wind, which blows from the south over the humid forests that extend without interruption from north of the equator to the eighteenth parallel of latitude in Bolivia.I had, unfortunately, no thermometer with me at Ega-- the only one I brought with me from England having been lost at Para.The temperature is so much lowered that fishes die in the river Teffe, and are cast in considerable quantities on its shores.The wind is not strong, but it brings cloudy weather, and lasts from three to five or six days in each year.The inhabitants all suffer much from the cold, many of them wrapping themselves up with the warmest clothing they can get (blankets are here unknown), and shutting themselves indoors with a charcoal fire lighted.I found, myself, the change of temperature most delightful, and did not require extra clothing.It was a bad time, however, for my pursuit, as birds and insects all betook themselves to places of concealment, and remained inactive.The period during which this wind prevails is called the "tempo da friagem," or the season of coldness.The phenomenon, I presume, is to be accounted for by the fact that in May it is winter in the southern temperate zone, and that the cool currents of air travelling thence northwards towards the equator become only moderately heated in their course, owing to the intermediate country being a vast, partially-flooded plain covered with humid forests.
