Arizona republican., 1898-07-25
YUMA IN THE EAST.
No Clothes. No Billed Shirts. but Heat
 to Beat Hell.

Every summer season of every year gives to the papers of the east an Cp- portunity to get off the old stale all legged jokes about Arizona climate. The old Yumaite who went to the boss of hell and shiveringly demanded his overcoat and blankets never misses space. The cracking and smashing of thermometers in Phoenix. the hens laying hard-boiled eggs in Tucson, and all the rest of the 1747 repertoire, all reprinted as new and original. Many of these things make up what appears to be letters from cur special cores pondent on the spot"
 In the Kansas City World one day last week appeared a two column ar ticle on southern Arizona. Parts of it are quite favorable, while other DOT tions are horrid exaggerations. For instance, the writer says, speaking of Yuma:
 "TIhis is the place where for weeks at time the temperature ranges from 97 degrees to 125 degrees above zero. and for some days it goes even to 125 degrees in the shade; where the in habitants remark upon the coolness of the atmosphere when the mercury in the daylight hours is in the neighbor- hood of 90 degrees"
 The assertion is ventured on the au- thority of a man now here from Yuma that no man living ever saw the ther- mometer at Yuma higher than PA, and yet this writer puts it at 125 with the very brazenness of effrontery
 The writer, still speaking about Yuma, informs the reader that eastern people in Yuma "commonly wear green goggles and smoked glasses" Perhaps this accounts for the fact that they do not read the thermometer aright
 But here is an effort which no doubt filed the writer with pride. It is tough on Yuma, but the eastern people had to have it:
 . "To show how hot the atmosphere here really is 1t may be mentioned that the writer has seen mining and civil engineers carry bits of carpet to lay under their feet while at work to keep the sun-baked adobe from blistering their soles. Childrn would not think of walking barefoot on the sun-baked earth at monday. Railroad brake men
 
 handle coupling pins and links. The china and glassware in the houses and at the little hotel are as warm on any day in summer as if they had just come out of very warm water, and window panes are unbearably hot. When one puts his hand on wall in a house on a hot day it feels like the walls that surround al bakers oven. All horses and cows are kept here under roofs or sheds at midday when the mercury is ranging high. Vegetables such as potatoes, rot in two days in such high temperature, and milk sours , in an hOur."
 Why he confined himself in the car pet line to mining and civil engineers it is hard to imagine. If he had gotten glasses just a trifle more green, or a bit more smoky, there is no doubt that he would have seen all of the inhabi- tants of Yuma lugging about entire rolls of carpet to protect their feet from ''the sun-baked adobe.''
 The poole of Yuma, SO this writer asserts. wear scarcely any clothing and there is mot billed shirt to be seen in town"
 1 Here is a nice little morsel for Gila Bend to swallow:
 "At the little town of Gila Bend, seventy miles east of Yuma, lasi summer, half a dozen miners went on a spree when the temperature was at about 118. Three of them died as they lay asleep in the broiling sun, and one of the others has been demented ever since"
 Poor Gila Bend. In a dozen years there has not gathered at one time within the confines of the town half dozen miners There is no denying that the thermometer twas at about 118," but three men did not die there last summer, or any other summer In fact, there has been a death rate of but three in four years and this has nearly skinned the town.
 These customers will have theil iOkeS