248 Beiiond t/ie .Sicrrax. 



into light until we had entered Arizona. We know where we are going, 

 however, as well as if it wore day. We know that on leaving El Paso we 

 are to cross the Rio Grande and traverse from end to end the celebrated 

 Oadsden Purchase. It is the old Mesilla valley, south of the River Gila, em- 

 bracing an area of •ij,.53-3 square miles. This is the country which was 

 '• pitro/irtaw/ " from Mexico by the United Suites in 18.13. The transaction 

 was a sort of amicable finale to the treaty of Guadalupe Hidaldgo; that is, 

 our mild-mannered Uncle Samuel took a few millions in his left hand and a 

 rusty sword in his ri^hl, walked up to Republica Mexicana and said: "A 

 fair day to you, my sister. Pve bought another of your little farms. There's 

 the money ; take it, or — " 



With the morning of the IGlh of January, our vision took in, for the 

 first time, the landscape of what the last generation chose to call the Great 

 American Desert. The atmosphere above this Arizonian plain shines like 

 crystal. The plain is almost absolutely treeless and void. Except some cot- 

 ton-woods on the margins of far distant and ambiguous streams, nothing 

 worthy of the name of tree is seen. Still we continue to traverse that limit- 

 less expanse of coarse, but nutritive, grass on which the millions of bullalo 

 once inhabiting this infinitude fed and fattened and nourished. BuHalo 

 grass is the alfalfa of the bison, as the clover is the alfalfa of the Jersey heifer. 



It were hard to conjecture the outcome of this strange and marvelous 

 Arizona. What is it to become in the future ? Can large populations plant 

 themselves, expand with enterprise and quicken under the stimulus of great 

 resources here on this seeming waste ? Can cities be built, and trees be 

 planted, and mines be opened and hamlets scattered through this vast 

 region, with its arid surface and flashing atmosphere ? I know not. Doubt- 

 less the accessible supply of water lies at the solution of the problem. This 

 American desert, be it known, is not the desert of Cobi, not Sahara. These 

 latter are merely infinite plains of juiceless, lifeless sand, heaped here and 

 there in dunes and tossed by reckless whirlwinds. Not so these plains of 

 Arizona. They luve in them, on the contrary, every condition and element 

 of boundless fertility and fruitfulness, except— except water. It is wattr, 

 fellow citizens, that you must have. If we could, we would rain upon you : 

 but we can not. Our humidity is hardly enough for ourselves. Therefore, 

 we can not be wrung out for your sakes. You must either drip or dig. If 

 you will, mayhap you shall flourish; but without some artilicial contrivance 

 for watering your desert, it appears to us that it is destined to lie there blie 

 tering in the sun, flashing briefly with its springtime expanse of buflalo 

 grass, and then drying up like a furnace for ages yet to come. May you be 

 watered, my brethren! 



From the entrance into Arizona the ascent is gradual, but generally 

 perceptible, as you journey to the middle and western parts of the terri- 

 tory. Our excursion made one import;int stop in the region here described. 

 At Tucson, about midway of the Arizonian plateau, our sections drew up 

 for dinner. The hotel piazza skirts the railway tracks. It is called the San 



