marine animals scattered
along the shore. Otters and seals impart life to the inaccessible rocks;
hosts of coast birds eagerly pounce on the fish and mollusca cast on
shore; variegated lizards sport on the sand hillocks; and busy crabs and
sea spiders work their way by furrows through the humid coast.

The scene changes in May. A thin veil of mist then overspreads the sea
and the shore. In the following months the thickness of the mist
increases, and it is only in October that it begins to disperse. In the
beginning and at the end of the period called winter this mist commonly
rises between nine and ten o'clock in the morning, and disappears about
three, P.M. It is heaviest in August and September; and it then lies for
weeks immoveable on the earth. It does not resolve into what may be
properly called rain, but it becomes a fine minute precipitate which the
natives call GARUA (thick fog or drizzling rain). Many travellers have
alleged that there are places on the Peruvian coast which have been
without rain for centuries. The assertion is to a certain degree
correct, for there are many districts in which there never is rain
except after an earthquake, and not always even then.

Though the _garua_ sometimes falls in large drops, still there is
this distinction between it and rain, that it descends not from
clouds at a great height, but is formed in the lower atmospheric
regions, by the union of small bubbles of mist. The average
perpendicular height over which this fog passes does not exceed one
thousand two hundred feet; its medium boundary is from seven to eight
hundred feet. That it is known only within a few miles of the sea is
a highly curious phenomenon; beyond those few miles it is superseded
by heavy rains; and the boundary line between the rain and the mist
may be defined with mathematical precision. I know two plantations,
the one six leagues from Lima, the other in the neighborhood of
Huacho: one half of these lands is watered by the garuas, the other
half by rain, and the boundary line is marked by a wall.

When the mists set in, the chain of hillocks (_Lomas_) bordering the
sand-flats on the coasts undergoes a complete change. As if by a stroke
of magic, blooming vegetation overspreads the soil, which, a few days
previously, was a mere barren wilderness. Horses and cattle are driven
into these parts for grazing, and during several months the animals find
abundance of rich pasture. There is, however, no wat