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CLIMATE—PERPETUAL JUNE.
Puerto Rico is a very beautiful island. Its climate and scenery attract many visitors, and erelong it will be a popular winter resort for people from many countries.
It has been called the land of perpetual June. Flowers bloom and plants and trees yield fruit the year round. There is no winter; but during the season which is our winter, their skies are beautifully clear and blue.
The air is neither dry nor moist, but perfect. The nights are always cool, and the trade winds keep the hottest days from being unpleasant. The average temperature is only 80°. It is the coolest and the healthiest place in the West Indies.
[Illustration: GATHERING COFFEE IN PUERTO RICO.]
There are two seasons, the rainy and the dry. The rainy season lasts from July to December; the dry, from January to June. From November to June the climate is more than usually delightful and healthful. In the summer months it is somewhat warm, and the heat and dampness are oppressive in August and September.
In September and October the rain comes in torrents, but it rains in the mountains almost every day in the year. The daily showers of the rainy season usually come late in the afternoon, but the sky clears up with the setting sun.
The people pay little attention to drainage or to securing a supply of good water. As a result, fevers are common during the summer months among the people who live in crowded quarters in the city or in the marshes.
Hurricanes occasionally occur between the months of July and October.
These are sometimes accompanied by earthquake shocks. People may be
injured or killed and their homes destroyed during these violent storms.
Puerto Rico, however, is freer from them than other islands of the West
Indies.