DESERT SKY AND CLOUDS 



101 



intervening valley, pouring down the same flood 

 of rain, and yet not a drop of it reaching the 

 ground. The air is always dry and the rain- 

 drop that has to fall through eight thousand 

 feet of it before reaching the earth, never gets 

 there. It is evaporated and carried up to its 

 parent cloud again. During the so-called " rainy 

 season " you may frequently see clouds all about 

 the horizon and overhead that are "raining" 

 letting down long tails and sheets of rain that 

 are plainly visible; but they never touch the 

 earth. The sheet lightens, breaks, and dissi- 

 pates two thousand feet up. It rains, true 

 enough, but there is no water, just as there are 

 desert rivers, but they have no visible stream. 

 That is the desert of it both above and below. 



With the rain come trooping almost all the 

 cloud-forms known to the sky. And the thick 

 ones like the nimbus carry with them a chilling, 

 deadening effect. The rolls and sheets of rain- 

 clouds that cover the heavens at times rob the 

 desert of light, air, and color at one fell swoop. 

 Its beauty vanishes as by magic. Instead of 

 colored haze there is gray gloom settling along 

 the hills and about the mesas. The sands lose 

 their lustre and become dull and formless, the 

 vegetation darkens to a dead gray, and the 



Rainfall. , 



Efect of the 

 nimbus. 



