A Five Years' Residence in Buenos Ayres, During the years 1820 to 1825: Containing Remarks on the Country and Inhabitants; and a Visit to Colonia Del SacramentoLove, George Thomas
History
A Five Years' Residence in Buenos Ayres, During the years 1820 to 1825: Containing Remarks on the Country and Inhabitants; and a Visit to Colonia Del Sacramento
Love, George Thomas
Buenos Aires (Argentina) -- Description and travel; Colonia del Sacramento (Uruguay) -- Description and travel
The CLIMATE of Buenos Ayres, taken generally, is decidedly good, and
more congenial to English habits than that most places abroad. Its
salubrity, however, is overrated: a consumptive person must not think
of coming here; many of that class have been obliged to fly to Mendoza
and other climes, to escape the vicisitudes of this.
The spring months of September, October, November, and the autumn
ones of April and May, are the most agreeable parts of the year. The
thermometer, at those seasons, averages about 60; and we have repeated
clear and bracing weather, intermingled, however, with inclement days.
The summer is not so hot as the latitude would denote. A sea breeze sets
in, at times, towards the afternoon; but this is not regular. December
and January are the hottest months. On some days of oppressive heat, the
thermometer may average 80, and at others, the pleasing temperature of
70 and 75. In January, 1824, for nearly a week it was 96 in the shade:
the oldest inhabitant never remembered such a continuance of heat.
When the heat is at the greatest, a _pampero_ suddenly comes, with its
accompaniment of rain, thunder and lightning, and cools the air. These
Pampero winds from the W. and W.S.W. with nothing to impede their
progress across the extended Pampas, blow with great violence, raising
clouds of dust, and obliging every one to close windows and doors. Being
off the land, they are not dangerous to shipping; though vessels at
the mouth of the river have been blown in sea hundreds of miles, by
a Pampero. The thunder and lightning to an European is terrific: the
lightning is often dangerous.
The dust, fleas, and musquitos, render the summer months very
disagreeable. The fleas are a great annoyance, the houses being filled
with them; the very dust breeds them; and they seem to have a great
partiality for foreigners. I don't observe that the natives heed them.
They laugh at the English mode of washing the rooms to get rid of these
vermin; their plan is, to strew the room with fennel, sweeping that
and the fleas altogether into the street. Musquitos are another of the
disagreeables.
A north wind, in summer, is very unpleasant, the heated atmosphere
relaxing both mind and body. The combined effects of heat, dust, and
wind, make the enjoyment of an evening promenade extremely precarious.
In summer, the pastures frequently catch fire, from the intenseness of
the heat. In 1821, Mr. Halsey, an American gentleman, who has a large
sheep farm, sustained a considerable loss by an event of this kind,
many of his sheep having been burnt. The same heat that occasioned Mr.
Halsey's loss brought on a violent Pampero; and, from the dust and
burning ashes that enveloped the city, one might have supposed that
the days of Herculaneum and Pompeii were about to return.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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