y sell at exorbitant prices to
deluded prospectors searching for riches which they never find. Though
the terrible heat ruins the health of the white men in a year or two,
so that they have to move away, they have succeeded in keeping
a thermometer record for some years. No other properly exposed,
out-of-door thermometer in the United States, or perhaps in the world,
is so familiar with a temperature of 100 degrees F. or more. During the
period of not quite fifteen hundred days from the spring of 1911 to May,
1915, a maximum temperature of 100 degrees F. or more was reached on
five hundred and forty-eight days, or more than one-third of the time.
On July 10, 1913, the mercury rose to 134 degrees F. and touched the top
of the tube. How much higher it might have gone no one can tell. That
day marks the limit of temperature yet reached in this country according
to official records. In the summer of 1914 there was one night when the
thermometer dropped only to 114 degrees F., having been 128 degrees
F. at noon. The branches of a peppertree whose roots had been freshly
watered wilted as a flower wilts when broken from the stalk.

East and south of Death Valley lies the most interesting section of the
American desert, the so-called succulent desert of southern Arizona and
northern Mexico. There in greatest profusion grow the cacti, perhaps the
latest and most highly specialized of all the great families of plants.
There occur such strange scenes as the "forests" of suhuaros, whose
giant columns have already been described. Their beautiful crowns of
large white flowers produce a fruit which is one of the mainstays of the
Papagos and other Indians of the regions. In this same region the yucca
is highly developed, and its tall stalks of white or greenish flowers
make the desert appear like a flower garden. In fact this whole
desert, thanks to light rains in summer as well as winter, appears
extraordinarily green and prosperous. Its fair appearance has deceived
many a poor settler who has vainly tried to cultivate it.

Farther south the deserts of America are largely confined to plateaus
like those of Mexico and Peru or to basins sheltered on all sides from
rain-bearing winds. In such basins the suddenness of the transition
from one type of vegetation to another is astonishing. In Guatemala,
for instance, the coast is bordered by thick jungle which quickly gives
place to magnificent rain forest a few miles inland. This continues