CLIMATE, EVIL BEASTS, SCENERY 117 



' bear stories ' are the order of the evenings 

 spent around the roaring fires of cottonwood 

 or cedar. 



Spring in the Land of Perpetual Sunshine 

 meets, of course, with a less joyful greeting 

 than in gloomier climes. Nevertheless, when 

 the acequias brim with the brown and rushing 

 flood, and the orchards flush with colour and 

 resound with song, and the winter world casts 

 off its mantle of drab, and rises to meet the 

 advancing year and be made by it a thing of 

 naught well, we have Spring indeed, but 

 Spring performing only half her functions, 

 where there is no snow to be melted, no 

 sodden earth to be dried, no misty skies to 

 be swept clear. 



Also there are the winds to be reckoned 

 with. On first making a home in the Arid 

 Belt, one is informed that the wind blows only 

 at certain seasons of the year, and that its 

 velocity, although apparently great, is not, in 

 fact, comparable with that attained by it in 

 other parts of the Far or Middle West. The 

 charts supplied show the wind-rate of El Paso, 

 a city on the Texas border, only forty miles 

 distant, and possessing a climate almost 



