The remarkable uniformity of these climates, albeit with a slightly more distinct tendency to variation as one recedes from the Equator, are well illustrated in these tables, as also is the dependence of season on purely local conditions in these latitudes.

The gradual development of a dry season as one proceeds southward from the Equator, as well as the gradual diminution of the rainfall that accompanies it, is very instructive.

The rainfall, therefore, appears to be from 56-60 ins., and the reporter remarks:—

“On the sea coast, the experience so far gained seems to prove that the climate of the western portion (of the island) is rainy. Port Moresley is apparently near the centre of a dry belt that extends 100-150 miles along the coast. Eastward of this the climate becomes more rainy as far as the East Cape. The north-east coast, as far as Cape Nelson, is drier, and beyond this again, more rainy—Mamlaro is a wet district. As far as known, the mountain region is more rainy. Thunder storms are more frequent and mist and drizzle also prevail on the high lands.”

Exploration in New Guinea is, however, a pursuit which requires the traveller to brave to an exceptional extent the dangers of poisonous snakes and other venomous vermin.

Capt. I. A. Lawson (“Wanderings in the Interior of New Guinea,” Chapman and Hall, London, 1875) describes an apparently undoubted case of death from scorpion sting in an adult, and states that large numbers of Papuans are killed by them. He saw several scorpions ten inches long. The patient became comatose. After about three hours, thin watery, almost colourless, blood began to flow from his ears, eyes and nose, which exhaled a horrible stench, and the man died. He measured one scorpion thirteen inches long, and a second exceeded ten inches.

Australia.

—The greater part, fortunately, of the island continent is typically “a white man’s country,” the temperature of latitudes south of the line being so much lower than those of the northern hemisphere that only the extreme northern part of the country comes within our limits.

One would expect, for example, Brisbane, lying in 27° 28′ S., to be very hot, but an inspection of the table below shows that it is only in the north of Queensland that one may expect to meet anything approaching a tropical climate.

Unfortunately the Queensland official statistics do not appear to have been collated, but the year chosen seems to be a fairly representative one. This deficiency is the more surprising as, in a country so often affected with destructive droughts, one would have expected that every effort would have been made to elucidate, by carefully drawn-up normal tables, the usual sequence of good and bad seasons.

Unfortunately, the greater part of the interior of the country is an almost waterless desert, the development of which, unless subterranean sources of water can be tapped, seems almost hopeless, and almost the whole west coast shares in this terrible disability, and would probably have remained as deserted as the interior but for the recent discoveries of its richness in gold. Even in the extreme north, at Port Darwin, the climate is by no means unendurable for a place within 12¹⁄₂ degrees of the line, and the mean rainfall, 63·21 ins., is very moderate for a place so situated.

The climate of the tropical portion of Western Australia will be sufficiently indicated by the following table for Wyndham, in lat. 15° 27′ S.

The total annual rainfall here only amounts to 20·54 ins. (521·8 mm.); and Freemantle, in lat. 32° S., on the coast, only receives 28·15 ins. (715 mm.); and Coolgardie, far in the interior, but 7·18 ins. (181·7 mm.); but the temperature records of neither of the two last-mentioned places quite entitles them to be considered in the light of hot countries.

From 20° to 25° south latitude the coast is even drier; Cossach, in latitude 20° 40′ S., receiving but 9·3 ins. (247 mm.), and Carnarvon, in latitude 24° 52′ S., but 7·83 ins. (199 mm.). In these localities the perceptible rainfall occurs in June and July. In the summer (January, February) some of these places are no doubt very hot, but the nights are nearly always fairly cool. In many of these places water is so scarce that a bath is a luxury scarcely attainable by any but the very rich, the precious fluid having to be eked out at what seems to us a fabulous price per gallon, or even pint. This difficulty is, however, being met in some places by enormous engineering works, and colonists may be met with who have a good deal to say in favour of these apparently inhospitable shores.

Pacific Islands.

—The pages of Stevenson and Ralf Bolderwood have so familiarised us with the delights of these favoured spots—where it is always summer, but rarely oppressively hot—that it is probable that the general public have a better idea of their climates than is the case with almost any other tropical region. Owing to their comparatively small economic importance, it is, however, impossible to do more than supply a pair of tables illustrative of the climate of a few of the better-known spots.

The places have also been selected so as to illustrate the changes in season we met with in passing from North to South, and indicate much the same sequence that has already been noticed in the case of the Malay Archipelago, but the temperatures are several degrees lower in the case of each corresponding latitude, so that, while the Malay Islands are stormy and trying, the Polynesian groups are amongst the most pleasant of the warm climates of the world. Except in the Marshall groups, and in some of the Fijis, the rainfall is moderate for localities situated so near the equator.

Qara Valu has been selected as having the heaviest rainfall recorded in this part of the world, and it must not be imagined that such a chronic downpour is in any way typical of the Fiji Islands, most of which have a comparatively moderate rainfall; Bua with 98·35 ins. (2,497 mm.), and Lesuha with 97·15 ins. (2,465 mm.), being fairer examples; but there is the same tendency to a comparatively even distribution throughout the year.

These islands are, it is almost needless to remark, occasionally visited by terrible tornadoes, but are normally continuously under the influence of the trade winds, which here do not suffer from interruption, during the summer solstice, from disturbance due to the area of low pressure that originates from the superheating of land and water over Australia and the islands and confined seas that intervene between it and the Asiatic continent.

The American Continent.

—Like the islands of the Pacific, climatic data in America are characterised by lower levels than are met with in the great land masses of Europe, Asia, and Africa. As a result of this we find that, although we know that New York can produce a most discreditable array of cases of sunstroke in the height of summer, it is only the extreme southern portion of the United States that really merits the title to belong to the category of hot climates. There are doubtless to be met with fiercely hot places in Mexico, and malarious foci in the isthmus of Darien, which may rival anything to be met with in the old world, but speaking generally, climates are generally milder than those of corresponding places on this side of the “herring pond.”

Commencing with the Southern United States, all that need be described in the present work is the belt extending from California in the west to Florida in the east.