THE NAUTILUS. 



Vol. XXXIII OCTOBER, 1919 No. 2. 



ALONG THE MEXICAN BORDER, 1919. 



BY JAMES H. FERRISS. 



New Year's day a turkey dinner in Tuscon with Frank Cole. 

 The next day Sonorellas in the Santa Catalina foothills; but it 

 was not until the 13th, at the Tumacacori Mission, on the Santa 

 Cruz river that the whole party answered roll call. A. A. 

 Hinkley, our Mexican and Central American explorer, of Du- 

 Bois, IU.; Robert Camp, collecting everything, alive or dead, 

 for the American Museum, of Brownsville, Texas; Miss Eliza- 

 beth Pilsbry, of Philadelphia, daughter of our NAUTILUS Editor, 

 and Mrs. Ferriss answered. I called the roll. Miss Rell Gelder, 

 of Detroit, Michigan, joined the party later. 



This camp was in easy walking distance of the Tumacacori 

 and San Cayetano ranges, and in an hour by auto we attacked 

 the slides of the foothills south of the Santa Ritas. It was a 

 rich location, also agriculturally and historically. Here came 

 the Spanish priests from Mexico as early as 1601. The founda- 

 tion of the Mission was laid in 1700 and the building still occu- 

 pied in 1911. Here too was a mining city, Tubac, in the midst 

 of rich fields of gold and silver. The priests were also miners, 

 and later came a company equipped at Los Angeles, Texas, that 

 prior to the civil war took out silver by the million dollars. 



In fact the Aztecs were energetic miners way back, and the 

 ruins of a large city in the Tumacacori mountains is supposed 

 to mark the town site of one of those seven cities of Cibola. 

 Says J. Donald Mitchell, an Arizonian historian: "On the sides 



