The middle of the watershed is the most humid part: one sees the great humidity of its climate at once in the trees, old and young, being thickly covered with lichens; some flat, on the trunks and branches; others long and thready, like the beards of old men waving in the wind.

Large orchids on the trees in company with the profusion of lichens are seen nowhere else, except in the mangrove swamps of the sea-coast.
I cannot account for the great humidity of the watershed as compared with the rest of the country, but by the prevailing winds and the rains being from the south-east, and thus from the Indian Ocean: with this wind generally on the surface one can observe an upper strong wind from the north-west, that is, from the low humid West Coast and Atlantic Ocean.

The double strata of winds can easily be observed when there are two sheets of clouds, or when burning grass over scores of square miles sends up smoke sufficiently high to be caught by the upper or north-west wind.

These winds probably meet during the heavy rains: now in August they overlap each other.

The probability arises from all continued rains within the tropics coming in the opposite direction from the prevailing wind of the year.