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Updated: June 23, 2025
Oven-like canyons in the long flanks of the mountain seemed still to glow with the heat of yesterday's noon; the breathless air yet trembled and quivered over stifling gorges and passes in the granite rocks, while far at their feet sixty miles of perpetual summer stretched away over the winding American River, now and then lost in a gossamer haze.
A high wall incloses the grounds, in which oven-like niches are prepared for the reception of the coffins containing the bodies of the wealthy residents, while the poor are thrown into shallow graves, often several bodies together in a long trench, negroes and whites, without a coffin of any sort. Upon them is thrown quicklime to promote rapid decomposition.
After landing from the mail-steamer in the dark, we had had merely impressions of oven-like heat, and of a long, dim-lit drive in endless suburbs of flimsily built, wooden houses, through the spice-scented, hot, black-velvet night, enlivened with almost indecently intimate glimpses into humble interiors, where swarthy dark forms jabbered and gesticulated, clustered round smoky oil-lamps; and as the suburbs gave place to the open country, the vast leaves of unfamiliar growths stood out, momentarily silhouetted against the blackness by the gleam of our carriage lamps.
And in oven-like cities of India there were men who looked out at the white sun-glare, the heat-baked dust, the welter of crowded streets, who listened to the unceasing chorus of harsh-throated crows, the strident creaking of cart- wheels, the buzz and drone of insect swarms and the rattle call of the tree lizards; men whose thoughts went hungrily to the cool grey skies and wet turf and moist ploughlands of an English hunting country, men whose memories listened yearningly to the music of a deep-throated hound and the call of a game-bird in the stubble.
It is a region where cool, gray skies and frequent rains prevail, and where a fire is needed most of the year, and indeed it is almost a necessity after sunset at all seasons. The thermometer never rises above 70° Fahr., and the average temperature is 60°. The change from oven-like Colombo in midsummer to the air of this invigorating region is truly delightful.
The bodies of the soldiers who fall on the Carso are not infrequently found to have been baked hard and mummified after lying for a day or two on that oven-like floor of stone. The Carso is probably the strongest natural fortress in the world. Anything in the shape of defensive works which Nature had overlooked, the Austrians provided.
It was here that the trade winds, shorn of their fury and strength in the heated, oven-like air that rose from the valley, lost their weary way in the tangled recesses of the wooded slopes, and breathed their last at the foot of the stone cross before the Mission.
The stove began to heat the room fearfully, for after the firewood had been reduced to charcoal, and the fumes from it were gone, the sliding trap-door in the chimney had been closed, thus preventing the heat from escaping. The thick walls of the oven-like stove had been heated, and threw out a great deal of heat, which to me soon became unbearable.
In the centre there was an oven-like structure, made of boulders piled upon each other without any cement whatever. Along the walls were three rows of seats, made simply from the branches of trees and rising one above the other, just like seats at a circus, the first one being near the ground. The people had brought wood beforehand. This they put into the oven and set fire to it.
You pay no entrance money, but your refreshment costs a real which is twopence ha'penny; and for that you may enjoy not only a cup of coffee or a glass of manzanilla, but an evening's entertainment. As the night wears on the heat is oven-like, and the air is thick and grey with the smoke of countless cigarettes. The performance consists of three 'turns' only, and these are repeated every hour.
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