Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1883 — Where it Never Rains, but Fours. [ARTICLE]

Where it Never Rains, but Fours.

While the lack of water in Arizona is one of the most serious annoyances to the railroad, the presence of too much water is one of the railroad’s gravest dangers. This is easily explained, paradoxical as it may seem. The sudden and furious storms which change dry gulches into torrents and surge against the railroad dump with tremendous force present one of the most curious. and difficult problems in the maintenance of the railroad. You look out upon a stretch of sand glistening in the sun. Here and there are fissures and channels baked and dyy. It is the picture of a dusty, parched waste. Not a drop of water is to be seen. Suddenly the sky is covered with black clouds. The rain descends like myriads of swift-ly-advancing lances. The landscape before and behind is hidden by gray sheets of water pouring from the skies. Against the car windows the raindrops rush Avith the violence of bullets. There' is a savage intensity in the storm which is fairly appalling. The train slackens its-speed as though beaten back by tho onslaught of the storm god. Water enters at the cracks of the. doors, and you look anxiously at the windows, expecting them to give way before the rush of the tempest. You hear nothing save the rain rattling like file firing and the roar of. the atorm. Presently a lullciimefr find you are enabled to look out. Where is your parched desert? Along the sides of the track-leap angry rivers, turbid and foaming, tearing at the embankment like -wild beasts seeking release from their prison walls and rushing at length madly through the culverts, lashing right and left with terrible force. The dry fissures in the soil are filled with eddying torrents, the sandy beds of sunken riyers are covered'with a mighty tide, and on the low plains lie floods of sullen water, whose wrath is spen t. —Their the sun comes out. Soon the torrents run more feebly, and in a short time the desert is parched and bare as before. — Cor. Boston. Herald.