CLIMATE IN THE TAHARI

"It was roughly in the shape of a gigantic, lengthy trapezoid, with eastward leaning sides. At its northwestern corner lay Tor, West of Tor, on the Lower Fayeen, a sluggish, meandering tributary, like the Upper Fayeen, to the Cartius, lay the river Port of Kasra, known for its export of salt."
(Tribesmen of Gor)

"Diurnal(def. as a daily cycle) air temperatures in the shade are commonly in the range of 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Surface temperature, diurnally, is, of course, much higher in the dune country, by day, if one were so unwise as to go barefoot, the bright sand would quickly cripple a man, abraiding and burning the flesh from his feet in a matter of hours." (Tribesmen of Gor)

"In the Tahari there is an almost constant wind. It is a hot wind, but the nomads and the men who ply the Tahari welcome it. Without it, the desert would be almost unbearable, even to those with water and whose bodies are shielded from the sun." (Tribesmen of Gor)

"The area, in extent, east of Tor, was hundreds of pasangs in depth, and perhaps thousands in length. The Gorean expression for this area simply means the Wastes, or the Emptiness. It is a vast area, and generally rocky, and hilly, save in the dune country. It is almost constantly windblown and almost waterless. In areas it has been centuries between rains. Its oases are fed from underground rivers flowing southeastward from the Voltai slopes. The water, seeping underground, eventually, in places, due to rock formation, erupts in oasis springs, or, more usually, is reached by deep wells, some of them more than two hundred feet deep. It takes more than a hundred and fifty years for some of this water to make the underground journey, seeping hundreds of feet at times beneath the dry surface, moving only a few miles a year, to reach the eases." (Tribesmen of Gor)

"Prevailingly, the wind in the Tahari blows from the north or northwest. There is little to fear from it, except, in the spring, should it rise and shift to the east, or, in the fall, should it blow westward." (Tribesmen of Gor)

We were moving through hilly country, with much scrub brush. There were many large rocks strewn about. Underfoot there was much dust and gravel.

On the shaded sides of some rocks, and the shaded slopes of hills, here and there, grew stubborn, brownish patches of verr grass. Occasionally we passed a water hole, and the tents of nomads. About some of these water holes there were a dozen or so small trees, flahdah trees, like flat-topped umbrellas on crooked sticks, not more than twenty feet high; they are narrow branched, with lanceolate leaves. About the water, little more than muddy, shallow ponds, save for the flahdahs, nothing grew; only dried, cracked earth, whitish and buckled, for a radius of more than a quarter of a pasang, could be found; what vegetation there might have been had been grazed off, even to the roots; one could place one’s hand in the cracks in the earth; each crack adjoins others to constitute an extensive reticulated pattern; each square in this pattern is shallowly concave." (Tribesmen of Gor)

"The salt clung to my body. The sun was the sun of the late spring in the Tahari. The surface temperature of the crusts would be in the neighborhood of 160 degrees Fahrenheit. The air temperature would range from 120 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The marches to Klima are not made in the Tahari summer, only in the winter, the spring and fall, that some will survive them." (Tribesmen of Gor)

"The Tahari is perhaps most beautiful at night. During the day one can scarcely look upon it, for the heats and reflections. During the day it seems menacing, whitish, shimmering with heat, blinding, burning, men must shade their eyes; some go blind: women and children remain within the tents: but, with the coming of the evening, with The departure of the sun, there is a softening, a gentling, of this vast, rocky harsh terrain." (Tribesmen of Gor)

"The forced marches to Klima can only be done in the fall, winter, or spring when the surface temperature of the salt crusts reach 160 degree's Farenheit and the air temperature ranges from 120 to 140 degree's. The mining, harvesting, sifting, purifying and packaging process turn out nine qualities of salt which are shipped all over Gor." (Tribesman of Gor)

"To escape the blistering heat of the Tahari, where temperatures can reach 175 degree's Farenheit, a trench, 4 or 5 feet deep and 18 inches wide is dug. Temperatures are 50 degrees cooler 1 or two feet below the surface of the desert. The trench is drawn perpendicular to the path of the sun, so it provides the maximum shade for the longest period of time." (Tribesmen of Gor)

"The sky in the east, for Gor, like the Earth rotates to the east, had seemed cool and gray. It was difficult to believe then, in the cool of that morning, as early as late spring that the surface temperatures of the terrain we would traverse would be within hours better than one hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit. Our feet, earlier, had been wrapped in leather sheathing, it reaching, in anticipation of the crusts, — later to be encountered, to the knees." (Tribesmen of Gor)

"A shelter trench is a narrow trench some four or five feet deep and about eighteen inches wide. The sand, struck by the sun, can reach temperatures on its surface of more than 175 degrees Fahrenheit. Set on rocks, boards of metal some two feet in length, and six inches wide, exposed to the sun, are sometimes used by the nomad women in frying foods. Only a foot or two below the surface, these temperatures are reduced by more than fifty degrees. The trench provides, most importantly, shade from the sun. The air temperature is seldom more than 140 degrees in the shade, even in the dune country. The trench, of course, is always dug with its long axis perpendicular to the path of the sun, that it provide the maximum shade for the longest period of time." (Tribesmen of Gor)

"In places, the "open pits," the brine pits are exposed on the surface, where they are fed by springs from the underground rivers, which prevents their dessication by evaporation, which would otherwise occur almost immediately in the Tahari temperatures." (Tribesmen of Gor)

"Under the Tahari sun some men last as little as four hours, even those who have made the march to Klima.

Water had been nearby, but we had not been given any. We kept company with the stakes. One moves as little as possible. One must not sweat. Further, one shields, with one's body, the surface on which one lies. The surface temperature can reach one hundred and seventy-five degrees by late afternoon.

Oddly, I was now cold. It was the Tahari night. I could see the stars, the three moons." (Tribesmen of Gor)