Tierra caliente

“ The army now took its way across the level plains of the tierra caliente, on which Nature has exhausted all the wonders of creation; it was covered more thickly then than at the present day with noble forests, where the towering cottonwood-tree, the growth of ages, stood side by side with the light bamboo or banana, the product of a season, each in its way attesting the marvellous fecundity of the soil, while innumerable creeping flowers, muffling up the giant branches of the trees, waved in bright festoons above their heads, loading the air with odors. ”

“ Traveling from the foothills to the summit of the Cordilleras is like going from the equator to the arctic circle. One has every variety of climate peculiar to the torrid, [270] temperate and frigid zones, and the fauna and flora vary with the altitude as they change with the climate.
The inhabitants of the Andean regions have long recognized three distinct climates, known as those of the tierra caliente—hot land; the tierra fría—cold land; and the paramo. Men of science have, for the sake of convenience, added a third climate, that of the tierra templada, or temperate land. ”

“ You ask me about this climate, for ——. For one who like her, is in perfect health, I should think it excellent; and even an invalid has only to travel a few hours, and he arrives at tierra caliente. This climate is that of the tropics, raised some thousand feet above the level of the sea; consequently there is an extreme purity and thinness of the atmosphere, which generally affects the breathing at first. In some, it causes an oppression on the chest. ”

“ On the lowlands along the coast known as the tierra caliente, the features of nature are changed; vegetation assumes a more luxuriant aspect; palms, parasitical plants and trees of a tropical character, take the place of the evergreens of a colder clime; the climate is not salubrious, and the heat is oppressive. ”

“ In these great virgin forests tribes of monkeys find their home, and the tapir and the cougar have their being. Mangroves, palms, rubber-trees, mahogany, strange flora, and ungathered fruits run riot amid this tropical profusion, and flourish and fall almost unseen of man. And here the malarias of the lowlands lurk—those bilious disorders which man is ever fighting and slowly conquering. This is Mexico's tierra caliente.
But our way lies onwards towards the mountains. A wildness of landscape, unpictured before, opens to the view. ”

“ You will need clothing for hot weather as well as for cold. We shall find it quite chilly in certain parts of the tierra fria, or highlands, and warm enough in the tierra caliente, or lowlands along the coast. ”

“ These plains are not level, but rise from a low altitude above the sea to a height of two thousand feet and more; then the hills set their feet upon them and vegetation radically changes. This coast section is called the tierra caliente, or hot country; but with our entrance into the hills we pass gradually to a cooler and
PALMS OF THE COAST more salubrious climate, called by the natives tierra templada, the temperate region. ”

“ All along the Atlantic, the country is bordered by a broad tract, called the tierra caliente, or hot region, which has the usual high temperature of equinoctial lands. Parched and sandy plains are intermingled with others, of exuberant fertility, almost impervious from thickets of aromatic shrubs and wild flowers, in the midst of which tower up{6} trees of that magnificent growth which is found only within the tropics. ”

“ Heat, in this climate, converts the soil into something almost as unstable as water; and in my land cold often converts the water itself into a substance as hard as rock. Let us speak of this no longer, for the thoughts of the calm, clear, blue refulgence of a winter's lake, glimmering to stars and moonbeam, aggravate the horrors of this fiery desert, where, methinks, the very air which we breathe is like the vapour of a fiery furnace seven times heated. ”

“ Here the temperature rises to 122 degrees, and the air hangs in a hot envelope, lazily swinging to and fro, rising and falling in waves of heat, and making the sands blaze with an almost blinding light. Scorched, burned-out and furnace-like though the region be, it is, nevertheless, the abode of life, but no less curious than is the valley itself. ”

“ If we found the cold difficult to endure, how much more sensibly must it affect people who, habituated to heat which affords to Europeans very lively notion of a dominion which must not be named "to ears polite," bask delightedly in the beams of a sun which heats the earth like a furnace, and to whom in the most sultry weather a fire never appears to be unacceptable. ”

“ The path winds, but it is steep; the sun blazes on it; every step is in pulverized limestone, that seems to have been calcined by the intense heat, and rises in irritating powder; the mountain-side is white, chalky, glaring, reflecting the solar rays with blinding brilliancy, and not a breath of air comes to temper the furnace temperature. ”

“ Water being denied, the desert is soaked with sun. It is the Land of Heat. No plant grows in the scorching soil, no animal can endure it. No bird, no insect flies through the burning atmosphere. Each object shimmers until it seems but the reflection of itself. Fire descends from the burnished sky and vibrates in the air and scalds the sand. Yet concentrating a tropical sun, this hot solitude lies between the cold ocean and the mountains, a region of ice. ”

“ The resurrection of the frozen air, the stirring and quickening of the soil, and then this silent uprising of vegetation, this unearthly ascent of fleshiness and spikes. Conceive it all lit by a blaze that would make the intensest sunlight of earth seem watery and weak. ”

“ In that country, the climate is not the least like ours. It is hot all the year round, and for eight months the sun blazes like a fiery furnace, so that the people who live there are burnt as black as your boot ”

“ But in fact, the people of warm, temperate, and tropical [Pg 127] regions are most commonly gentle of mood; the climate acts as an anodyne, and soothes them into a peaceful equilibrium of the passions. ”

“ The Fire Country was then like the equatorial regions of earth—a dense, tropic jungle, hotter than most temperatures we have to bear, but still, by reason of its thick enveloping atmosphere of clouds, capable of supporting life in comparative comfort. ”

“ Distance and climate vanish before his wandering and adventurous spirit: the regions where the burning sun destroys all life and vegetation, or those where “the frost burns frore and cold produces the effect of fire,” have never stayed his purpose, or arrested his onward march. ”

“ Now when you reflect upon these various changes you will see that through the agency of this same internal heat land is preserved upon the face of the earth. If rain and frost, rivers, glaciers, and the sea were to go on wearing down the surface of the land continually, without any counterbalancing kind of action, the land would necessarily in the end disappear, and indeed would have disappeared long ago. ”

“ Wherever, in the primitive world, heat was radiated from the deeply fissured crust of the earth, palms, arborescent ferns, and all the animals of the torrid zone, could perhaps have flourished for centuries over extensive tracts of land. ”

“ It is getting very much hotter now, for the burning sand and the thousands of fires radiate heat-waves up through the air, heated already stiflingly. We think of our comrades down in the river bed, reeking with odours of killing and cooking, a combination of abominations unimagined by me before. ”

“ If, on the other hand, the polar regions were principally water, while the tropics were occupied with a belt of land, there would be no part of the earth’s surface on which the frost could fasten a firm hold, while the torrid zone would act like a furnace to heat the whole. ”

“ While one dark storm-cloud hovers over the city, showering its moisture upon the thirsty earth, another is seen a whole day’s journey to the eastward, creeping along some parched desert, with the rain, in slanting columns, pouring upon the white and shining fields of alkali, and still others hang about the mountain peaks in various directions, sending down red bolts of lightning upon their dark granite summits. ”

“ If it should be asked how it comes to pass, then, that the heat in many places between the tropics is esteemed so violent and insufferable, when it appears, by these instances, that it is sometimes rivalled or exceeded in very high latitudes not far from the polar circle? ”

“ Each of these mighty pioneer divisions has its common toils, dangers, and sufferings. Each, too, has toils, dangers, and sufferings peculiar to itself. The climate is the deadly foe of the northern pioneer. The scorching air of a brief summer is followed closely by the biting frost of a long winter. The snow, piled in drifts, blocks his passage and binds him to his threshold. Sometimes by a sudden change in the temperature a thaw converts the vast frozen mass into slush. ”

“ To this powerful cause we may ascribe the extraordinary dominion of cold, and its violent inroads into the southern provinces in that part of the globe. Other causes, no less remarkable, diminish the active power of heat in those parts of the American continent which lie between the tropics. ”

“ The heat of the day and the general demoralizing influences of the climate, were making havoc with the shapely men of yesterday, and nature seemed hastening to reabsorb, and renew by her marvellous processes, what was now blistering and burdening her surface. ”

“ This mountain draws the heat from them they are formed into clouds and condensed into rain, which, falling to the earth, make it soft with showers, causing the trees of the fields to clap their hands, the valleys to shout, and the mountains to sing. Thus the earth is made to yield her increase, and the heart of man is glad.
“Nor does the office of this cup of water in the physical economy end here. It has brought heat from the sea in the southern hemisphere to be set free here for the regulation of our climates; it has ministered to the green plants, and give meat and drink to man and beast. ”

“ The calmer light, the more gentle and equalized heat, the thicker and more humid atmosphere, explain that equalization of temperature, those days half veiled and transparent nights, and that tepid climate of the polar regions, that we might consider as presiding at the development of primitive life. Finally, the primitive sun, by its slow condensation, passing insensibly into its present state, necessarily forced the retreat of the torrid zone, thus ending the anterior equality of the climate, permitting cold to become established at the pole, and concentrating heat at the equator. ”

“ Remembering these things, we are reconciled to our lot in living in the temperate zone, and turn away even from the soft and easy life of the tropics, to find a keener delight in our rugged clime, and to welcome even the snow-drifts and the short winter days, since they bring the long winter evenings, and the roaring winter fires! ”

“ And on this occasion, I must beg leave to make a short digression on the heat and cold of different climates, and on the varieties which occur in the same place in different parts of the year, and in different places in the same degree of latitude.
The ancients conceived that of the five zones into which they divided the surface of the globe, two only were habitable, supposing that the heat between the tropics, and the cold within the polar circles, were too intense to be supported by mankind. ”

“ Such is the heat, that in the summer the soil is more like a fire than an oven ; the air, if it moves, is Like a furnace-blast ; and such its ex tent and sameness, that as great heat may prevail hundreds of miles south as north of the tropics. ”

“ When the land has become super-saturated, the cold, wet, wind, driving cold masses, surcharged with electricity, sets continually eastward, to restore the equilibrium in lands still reeking with the torrid blaze, and where the atmosphere has been rarified by from four to six months of burning suns. ”

“ Not a breath of air relieved the intense and oppressive heat of the atmosphere, unusual here, where pleasant summer breezes, and sometimes stronger gales, blow over the elevated plains with the regularity of trade-winds. ”

“ The hot dusty particles which fill the air increase its suffocating heat, [35] and the east wind, blowing over the long-heated soil, brings with it no refreshment, but rather a still more burning glow. ”

“ When the sun goes down, the fire ceases; then the dry land commences to give off its surplus heat by radiation, so that by nine or ten o’clock it and the air above it are cooled below the sea temperature. The atmosphere on the land thus becomes heavier than that on the sea, and consequently there is a wind seaward, which we call the land-breeze.—Maury. ”

“ And if it is true that varieties of the human race, adapted to these localities, show us, in comparison with ourselves, some indolence, this does not seem greater than, or even equal to, the indolence of the primitive man in temperate climates.
Contemplated in the mass, the facts do not countenance the current idea that great heat hinders progress. Many societies have arisen in hot climates, and in hot climates have reached large and complex growths. All our earliest recorded civilizations belonged to regions which, if not tropical, almost equal the tropics in height of temperature. ”