the sun at midday
`` The thermometer runs very high in this country , and it is not at all rare for it to indicate one hundred and twenty-five or one hundred and thirty degrees Fahrenheit . One traveler has a record of one hundred and thirty-nine degrees in the shade and one hundred and seventy-two in the sun . I am told that in South Melbourne the thermometer once made an official record of one hundred and eleven degrees in the shade and one hundred and seventy-nine degrees in the sun . `` So great is the heat of the sun at midday that travelers generally try to avoid it if they can do so . It is the plan of most people who travel on horseback , in wagons , or on foot , to start before daylight , and keep going until nine or ten o'clock . Then they halt and rest until three or four o'clock in the afternoon , when they move on and continue until late in the evening . Of course , the railways are not run on that principle , as the locomotive is not supposed to be affected by the outside temperature .