The age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1897-1902, 1898-10-11

suffering in the periods of temperature
among the nineties in the great cities ought
to come out here these summer days to
know better what Old Sol can do in the way
of heat making when he gets really down
to business. What would you say to living
in a spot where not blade of grass may
be seen, where there is nothing green but
few trees shimmering in the dusty sum
SHINE, where the earth everywhere is so
hot that one cannot stand upon it with bare
feet, and where from June l to early Oeto-
Der the temperature is seldom below 80
degrees and more generally about the 10th
degree mark-once in a while running up to
1923 and 125 degrees? What would you think
OF a temperature for full month not less
than 81 degrees of two weeks at a time
varying from 10 to lis degrees, IND even
a week at a time over 112 degrees in the
shade? That is what the residents of this
quaint old town of Yuma have regularly
each summer So far this season the Yu-
mans have had two spells of weather when
the mercury climbed up to III degrees in
the shade every morning for a few sue
cessive days, and descended to 96 and 100
degrees in the night. From June 10 TO IA
the daily temperature ranged from 107 to lis
degrees. From June l to June q, inclu-
sive, the temperature each afternoon
went as high as III degrees in the shade.
Yuma has been the banner hot town of
America for forty or fifty years. That an
Gent palsied and weather-beaten story
about the soldier who lived and died in the
garrison at Yuma, and whose ghost came
back one night for his army blankets for
use down in chilly, frosty he'll has gone far
and wide throughout the world (even DR..
Depew recently told 1T to a group of re-
porters who welcomed him home in New
York from his tour of the Pacific COAST
and has given a certain characteristic to
the fame of the town. In the forties and
fifties the army garrison at Yuma was ia
NOUS among Uncle Sans soldiers the
most dreaded post on the frontier. and the
letters and diaries of such military men as
Generals Albert Sidney Johnston, Edward
F. Beale and Kearny, who served their
military apprenticeship there, are plentiful
with comments on the terrific hot weather
of Fort Yuma in the summer months while
they served there
All conditions seem to unite in making
Yuma the hot summer spot it is. 1t is To-
Gated in a low basn-lke locality on the
edge of the lazy, muddy Colorado river, as
it meanders through desert sands and
adobe SOIL down to the gulf of California
Away to the west, across the river, and to
the south, stretches the Colorado desert,
several thousand square miles in area. 1t
is so merciless, CHASTITY and fierce desert
waste that no one dares cross it by wagon
or on foot in the summer months, and
never in winter or early spring. unless ac-
companied by companion or two and
fitted out with an abundance of drinking
water and food. Every summer there are
venturesome miners who lay down their
lives in trying to cross those deserts be-
cause they are overtaken by a sand-storm
or are weakened unto death by the dread
full heat.
Rain falls in Yuma and this region
| roundabout but four five times in a year,
and then only in the early winter months.
There are however, some very heavy floods
here in the months of February and March,
when the water in the Colorado river rises
and overfows its banks because of the
melting SHOWS away up in the mountains
of Colorado and northern Arizona, and the
heavy rains in southern California When
the water recedes 1t leaves some thousands
of acres of rich bottom lands along the
sides of the river, an area of alluvial mud,
where the Indians plant their mesquite
beans and melon seeds for their annual
crops, the same as the Egyptians make