The Arizona sentinel., 1900-09-26
A LURID LIAR.
The Distorted but Vivid Imagina-
 tiOn of
A DIrlE NOVEL LITERATEUR
Sanders Yuma Outrageously..-
 Wouldn't this Jar You?

J at Noon."
 Such are the headlines intro dncing an article clipped from an Oklahoma paper, and which, as a glittering emanation from a jim-jam imagination, we have rarely seen equaled. There is hardly a word of truth in the whole of it. The writer, who ever he may be, was evidently never in Yuma; or, if he was, must have been in the throes of a misfit jag or full-blown case of red-eyed horrors, when he produced the following:
 People in the east who complained of the great heat of August should con- gratulate themselves that they are not forced to live in Yuma, Ariz., the ban ner hot town of the United States.
 Fancy an everyday temperature vary ing from los to 125 degrees in the shade for four or five months at a stretch. Imagine village of several hundred adobe, stone and brick squat one-story houses and store buildings, all with clumsy porches in front, strewn along a dreary red brown roasting bank of a drowsy, muddy stream, where rude thoroughfares struggle up and down a naked hill shimmering under the fer cest, emptiest sky you ever saw. Such is Yuma.
 Imagine a region thousands of square miles in area, of yellow sand, quaint cacti, whitened powders, not one com manding mountain or shapely promi- nence-a desolate, ghastly desert waste under fiery sun-and you have the setting of Yuma. Imagine yourself on some vantage spot and looking over a frontier town paralyzed in overwhelm- ing sunlight, where scantily clad, swarthy Indians sprawl fast asleep on hot earth in patch of shade, no white person in sight, not sign of activity anywhere, stores shut, houses bolted and blinded, not a sound heard save a rustling of dried sage brush. And that is life in Yuma during a midsummer afternoon, writes correspondent on August To-
 The summer thus far this year in Yuma has been an average one. From
 May IA to May 30 the temperature every afternoon ranged from 8 degrees to 101. Then there was week of con- parative coolness; the mercury never rose above 90. From June ' to June 9 the mercury varied from 105 to 113 degrees. Old Sol then settled down to business. The desert sand dunes had become baked, and the foothills were glowing. For six weeks the mercury never was below 102, and from that it has gone to 122 degrees twice. From July to July 20 the average afternoon temperature was 115 degrees. During nights the mercury sunk slowly to an average of 105 at about a. m. With the rising of each sun the mercury up steadily until about 3 o'clock.
 And the warmest weeks of the year are yet to make their records. Last summer the hottest day in Yuma was August 26, when the mercury touched 127. In September there were several days when the temperature was at 12l and few nights when the thermometer never registered lower than los de- grees. In 1896 Yuma's red letter hot day occurred. It was August 16, when extra hot winds blew from off the desert. Between dawn and noon the mercury rose from Il0 to 123, and by 4 o'clock it rose to 129. Several deaths among children occurred during the heated spell.
 Geographically Yuma is situated for the making of high records. AS far as the eye can reach, and miles and miles farther, in any direction, there is noth- ing but profound aridity, through which the Colorado drowsily meanders to the gulf of California. From some points nothing is in sight but a vast crumpled sea of yellow sand and the horizon. Yuma is the heart of a region of ex- tinct volcanoes, barren hills and sterile canyons; a region of mirages, Gila monsters and reptiles that thrive amid burning alkali wastesand deadly thirSts, where not green thing in nature may be seen as far as vision sweeps, except a few spare cottonwood trees at the railway stations, where whitening white sunshine blazes from out cloud less sky twelve hours day, months at g time; where inf1amed eyes and even blindness from the intense sunshine are common; where the earth is so hot that white people can scarcely walk upon it with thin shoes, and where tough range cattle sicken and die in a few weeks.
 At night the whole population sleeps out of doors, and many people slumber under the open heavens 10 months in the year."
 The above is published in an obscure country paper in an ob- scure little town, and no great harm could result were if not for