The Arizona sentinel., 1899-08-12
Official Paper of Yuma County
A SUMMER IDYL.

date contained a three column ar tiele headed "Yuma Where It Gets
 Hot; Terrible Conditions of Life There in Summer; Continual Fierce
 Heat from a Cloudless Sky fol
 Months Blistering Deserts Surround
 the Baking Town-Hard Lines fol
 the Convicts Confined There.
 Every since the Army lieutenant
 who passed as a "yewmerist," was
 stationed here and sent out his funny" stories relative to the heat
 at Yuma. thls place has been the
 butt ofevery cheap newspaper quio'
 bier who had square meal in sight,
 and as a matter of fact Yuma has a
 reputation for heat that bellies the real condition. It is sacrilegious and eninently a waste of time and
 talent to endeavor to answer all such islanders in 6 reasonable, sen slble way. Those who live else
 where will not believe until they see. The good book says answer 3
 fool according to bis folly, and
 with this injunction in sight we
 wish to make few comments en
 passant upon the article referred to.
 The article is printed in small type
 and unsigned. A few antedated cuts illustrate it. The scenes which they purport to portray are just about as foreign to Yuma as a
 bath is to tramp. It is a master piece of "yewmer" to those who are acquainted with the facts, in fact it IS so humorous that it is ludicrous. To use sterotyped phrase, 1t is a tissue of falsehoods. The writer evidently had all kinds of wrinkles in his belly when he wrote it, and it perhaps saved the poor devils life by driving the wolf from the door, therefore it might be consider ed cruelty to animals to castigate the enterprising gernalist too se- verely. Now listen:
 "Fancy what it must be to live for months in a region of brown sand dunes, bald, suubaked and blasted mountains and foothills-a region of mirages, Giia monsters and the rep tiles that thrive amid burning alkali wastes and deadly thirsts; where not 8 green thing in nature may be seen as far as the eye reaches to the shim- mering horizon, except few sparse cottonwood trees at the railroad sta ton; where fierce whitening sunshine blazes from out cloudless sapphire sky twelve hours day three and more months at a time; where inflamed eyes and even blindness from the in tense sunshine are common; where the earth is so hot that white people can scarcely walk upon it with thin shoes, and where from early June un- til October the temperature is never below 90 degrees, seldom below 98 de- grees and generally ranges from 100 to 1I5 degrees with occasional rises to 122 and 125 degrees in the shadeW
 Gads! bathe his throbbing tenn pies in ice water! Apply cooling poultices to his bloomin' blasted, bleeding, infamed eyes! See how his tongue lolls out, and see him pant for breath! Poor devil, what is to be done? I'll tell you his case is desperate. But he is very likely better now since he had square meal. The reader will perceive from the above paragraph what kind of stuff the whole article is made of. What is the use of get ting wise and quoting facts and figures and statistics to refute such diatribes? Every body knows that the thermometer has bean down to 70 even this week and everybody knows that 1l2 is the highest for the season, which is about equal to 95 in Kansas City. And the land scapel Isn't he beaut when it comes to description? Brown sand lunes-bald andblasted mountains- 3ila monsters and reptles,-alkali . Eastes-deadly thirsts-no green ( ,hing-(except the Star man)- himmering horizon-withering unshine-sapphire sky-infamed e yes-"Zounds! I was never so U ,ethumped with words since I first 9 alled my brothers father, dad" n s there any sparse cottonwood trees 2 t the railroad station? The Star nan had his fancy, now let us fancy O few rows: h Fancy what it must look like s' raveljng through Yuma on Pull
 lan pas, ogling the landscape il hrough its monoc1e while its inn fir gination is highly colored with a'