Word: aridity
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...outer islands is their spectacular scenery. On the oldest and most fertile island, Kauai, spreading Plumiera (frangipani), symmetrical Norfolk pine, fragrant pikake blossoms and the umbrella-shaped monkeypod trees set off lush folded ridges, twisting valleys and cascading waterfalls. Youthful (2,800,000-year-old) Hawaii has arid, cactus-sprinkled, sleepily sloping uplands, rain forests, anthurium and macadamia groves, bizarre moonscapes of rock lava topped by the snow-capped peaks of Mauna Kea (13,796 ft.) and still-active Mauna Loa (13,680 ft.). Middle-aged Maui is dominated by the rugged crater of dormant Haleakala (House...
Since mid-September, the hot, arid "Santa Ana winds" had whistled westward through the mountain passes half a dozen times, raising Los Angeles temperatures to unseasonable levels, unnerving residents, roasting the hillside shrubs and trees until they were tinder dry. As the winds rose once again last week, the stage was set for disaster...
Nowhere is this rivalry more sharply drawn than in the arid sands and craggy cliffs of Yemen. There, in four years of sporadic skirmishing, the 50,000 Egyptian troops sent in by Nasser have been fought to a standstiil by tribesmen loyal to the ousted Imam Badr, who holds the hills and sustains his ragged army with supplies and arms from Feisal. Of late, however, Nasser has had less trouble fending off Feisal's royalist friends than in keeping in line the ragtag republican regime he sponsors in Yemen's capital...
During the past decade, while the winds of change whipped through the rest of Africa, the only thing blowing in French Somaliland was sand. An arid enclave of 72,000 African tribesmen, 8,000 Arabs and 600,000 goats, it voted in 1958 to remain a colony of France, apparently content with the several mil lion dollars a year that the French spend to help support it. Or so it seemed un til last month, when Charles de Gaulle passed through on the first leg of his round-the-world tour. Unexpectedly, he was greeted by riots and demonstrations whose...
...into port received only enough water to get them to the next stop. Building construction ground to a complete halt. Other industries were forced to close for a day. City authorities were even discussing the possibility of evacuating many of Bombay's 5,000,000 people to less arid regions of India...