Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/472

 452 nights are always cool and refreshing. Sunstroke is not known. Nor are the violent thunder-storms with which Nature, with us, endeavors to restore equilibrium after having exhausted its most oppressive warmth. The great drawback here, as there must always be some drawback, consists in occasional heavy "northers," which gather up the dust from the dry surface and produce painful dust-storms of two or three days' duration.



In autumn and winter the temperature is chilly enough to make fires a necessity morning and evening, and even all day long in apartments shut off from the influence of the sun. I was astonished to find the air so keen at these times, and a scum of ice forming upon water in the mornings even as far down as San Diego. The cold has a penetrating quality beyond its register by the thermometer. This, though usually overlooked, is important, since fuel is very scarce and correspondingly dear,