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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 That it is known only within a few miles of the sea is a highly curious phenomenon; beyond those few miles it is superseded by heavy rains; and the boundary line between the rain and the mist may be defined with mathematical precision.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
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