The Dupuyer acantha. [volume] (Dupuyer, Mont.) 1894-1904, 1900-11-29
IN SIZZLING YUMA.
RISES AS HIGH
AS 1875 DEGREES.
And People for 10 Months In the Year
Sleep Out of Doors-The Town the
Hottest in the Entire Country-All
Business Suspends at Noon.

People in the east who complained of
the great heat of August should con-
graduate themselves that they are not
forced to live in Yuma, Ariz., the ban
ner hot town of the United States.
Fancy an everyday temperature
varying from los to 125 degrees in the
shade for four or five months ct a
stretch. Imagine a village of several
hundred adobe, stone and brick squat
one-story houses and store buildings,
all with clumsy porches in front,strewr
along a dreary red brown roasting
bank of a drowsy, muddy stream;
where rude thoroughfares struggle up
and down a naked hill shimmering I'M
der the f~iercest, 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 n COM
handing mountain or shapely promi-
nence-a desolate, CHASTITY desert waste
under a 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 a patch of shade, 10 white
person in sight, not a 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 a correspondent on
August 10.
The summer thus far this year in
Yuma has been IN average one From
May IA to May 80 the temperature ev-
cry afternoon ranged from SO degrees
to 101. Then there was a week of COM
~parative GOODNESS; the mercury never
rose above 80. From June Z to June
25 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 hat it
has gone to 122 degrees twice. From
July 3 to July 20 the average afternoon
temperature vas 115 degrees. During
nights the mercury sunk slowly to an
average of 105 at about 4 a. m. With
the rising of each sun the mercury
climbed 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 121,
and a few nights when the Their
mometer never registered lower than
10S degrees. In 1896 Yuma's red letter
hot day occurred. 1t was August 16,
when extra hot winds blew from off the
the desert. Between dawn and noon
the mercury rose from 10 to 123, and
by 4 o'clock it rose t. 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 moth
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, ella
monsters and reptiles that thrive amid
burning alkali wastes and deadly
thirsts, where not q green thing in ma
ture may be seen as far as vision
sweeps, except a few sparse cotton
wood trees at the railway stations,
where a whitening white sunshine
blazes from out a cloudless sky twelve
hours a day, months at a time; where
inlamed eyes and ever 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..
Fishing an Art in China.
Nowhere in the world is the art OF