The Arizona sentinel., 1905-09-27
JEWELLERS IN DRY Places
The Reconstructed Desert as Seen by
an Eastern Correspondent.
Arthur Ruhl in Golfers Weekly.


south western corner of Ari
iona, is one of earth's hot pla
ces. It is no more uncomforta
ble-becauSe of the extremely
dry air-than New York City
is in one of those muggy summer
weeks when people sleep on the
grass in the parks and small
boys go swimming in the public
fountains without getting ar
rested, but the mercury behaves
scandalously and has given
Yuma a reputation. No matter
where you are travelling in the
southwest, if you happen to re-
mark upon the heat, your host,
or the Pullman conductor, or
the man across the table in the
dining car, will smile upon you
in a fatherly way and say, ''Ha!
wait till you get to YUMA"
The ancient anecdote about the
man who went back for his over
coat was first told about Yuma,
and they say that the ground
about there gets so hot that the
little desert lizards have to turn
on their backs every little while
and wriggle their feet in the air
until they are cooled off enough
and they can turn back and ron
on again.
Across the river from Yuma
begins what used to be known
as the Colorado Desert. Is is
fat waste, mostly below sea lev
ell, some fifty to one hundred
miles across, hemmed in by
ghostly sand dunes and barren
mountains covered with mcan-
looking volcanic rock, and
across it hot wind breatheS up
from the Gulf of California pre-
ciselg like the breath from an
open oven door. At Yuma, in
the summer, nobody feels wor-
ried to have the mercury hover
around ia degrees. Over in
the "desert" which is now rap
IDLY becoming no desert at all,
very conservative and self-re-
specting thermometers go up to
119 degrees and think nothing
of it, while other instruments
those which IN the wintry
north are known as ''Inilkmen'S
thermometers soar much high
er. At breakfast In the little
hotel in Imperial last June 1
asked the man sitting next to
me if they had had a warm
spring. "Well, said he with
sort of cheerful regret, as one
determined to make the best of J
u bad matter, mot what yon'd
really call hot. We haven't been +
abe to get it above lis yet"
When asked him If this wasn't ;
q bit wearing he replied, ''Never
goes above one hundred twenty
eight here and that don't both !
or mew 1t rains around Yuma t
and Imperial about three inches S
in the whole year-one good t
shower in the East: When you
recall that Ell Paso, which is !
reckoned to be in the ''desert" |
too, has more than three times
rs much as this, you can gather &
shat the neighborhood is"some {
dry" 1t is so dry, indeed and {
so hot that what little rain fall
falls disappears at once; for all t
practical purposes it might al
most as well not rain at all. 6
So rapid is evaporation that the J
at the side Of neld S
Of alfalfa across which a wind is G
blowing, and upon which irri
cation water is being flooded, $
nay be FIVE degrees lower than '
shat On the other. You may S
iall into an irrigation ditch crawl
)ut, and the water dry out of {
your clothes so fast that you t
Will actually feel cold, although i
he thermometer stands at 115 j
degrees in the shade. In such G
climate, if the apparently life t
ess soil happens really to be S
fertile, all that is needed, OBJ a
7iousIy, is plenty of water to i
urn the whole country into one f
rast forcing dollhouse. The soil /
toes happen to be fertile-as a
.ertiie as the Nile Valley, and +
suilt up in a similar way. The I