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