The hygrometer—Leslie’s—seldom indicates fewer than 12° or 15° in the wet season, and rarely exceeds 50° in the summer months. The range of the barometer may be considered exceedingly limited; for, during the period of six months that we had the opportunity of observing barometrical variations, the mercury was commonly stationary at 29⁹⁄₁₀, and was not seen to fall below 29½ inches. Our means of observation began in September, and ended in March, and therefore included the transition from wet to dry weather,—from the cool of winter to the highest heat of summer. On one occasion when we observed the barometer fall from 29⁹⁄₁₀ to 29½ inches, there had been a smart earthquake, which, though it happened in the usually dry month of January, was preceded by a gentle shower of rain, at the appearance of which the people in the streets rejoiced, and called it “agua bendita,” holy water!—On another occasion, when we noticed a similar sinking of the mercury, the river Rimac showed by its turbid and swollen stream that it rained heavily in the higher mountains.[3] As for thunder and lightning, they have been so rarely witnessed in Lima, that there they may be said to be unknown. The above statements regarding the state of the atmosphere in Lima, it may be proper to mention, are founded on observations made by the writer at his residence in Archbishop’s Street, close to the cathedral and great square; but about a mile higher up, in a part of the city called the “Cercado,” the influence of the adjacent hills is more sensibly felt in the cooler evenings and mornings;—the night thermometer sometimes sinks down to 54° at the orchards of the Cercado, when in the centre of the city it falls within an open window or veranda not under 60° of Fahrenheit. In Lima the four seasons are by no means distinctly marked: the dry summer weather frequently encroaches on the autumnal season, supposed to be humid; and again, the sort of weather and ailments most prevalent in winter are sometimes continued through a part of spring. Hence, though the seasons are usually distinguished into spring, summer, autumn, and winter, it would be more truly characteristic to adhere to the usual division of the aborigines, into wet and dry. In May the mornings become damp and hazy; and, from the beginning to the latter end of June, more or less drizzly. In October, again, the rains, which even in the months of July and August are seldom heavier than a Scotch mist, cannot be said to be altogether over, as the days are still more or less wet, or occasionally there may be seen to fall a light and passing shower; the evenings and mornings being damp and foggy.