En Avant. 249 



Xavier, and is in everj' respect a reputable place for eating. Under the 

 porch, when we were pilgrims there, were set up the bones of an enormous 

 saurian, taken from a sand-bed not far away. They were, indeed, gigantic 

 fragments, and were, evidently, constituents of a frame that would have 

 been appalling in its entirety. From some hasty proportions I figured his 

 length at ISO feet. You could have put a six-inch stovepipe through the 

 foramen in his cervical vertebra. As to the rest, we were not a little inter- 

 ested with the horticultural display which the wide-awake people of Tucson 

 and vicinity had extemporized for us on the platform. Benches were set, 

 and the products displayed after the manner of a fair. Several ladies were 

 present, who were, evidently, in sympathy with their country and believed 

 in its resources. Especially did the t^ffable and polite Doctor expa- 

 tiate to us on the excellence of what Central Arizona was able to produce 

 and exhibit. As a matter of fact, the vegetables shown were by no means of 

 an inferior quality. Some pumpkins sat there serenely, as big and yellow 

 as those of the Ohio valley. There was also some corn, well developed, but 

 rather small and flinty. There were squashes and beets, both of superior 

 quality, and Lima beans not to be excelled. Some other beans, manufact- 

 ured after the Spanish pattern, were exhibited on the benches, and several 

 succulent plants completed the fair — and a good article of celery must be 

 added to the list. 



What else may be said of the Arizonian landscape ? Over the buftalo 

 grass is seen ever and anon a vast area of sage-bush and cactus. * Of the 

 former much has been said and written. It is a peculiar evergreen sort of a 

 growth, as high as yotir breast or head, and having somewhat the general 

 shape of an arbor vitte. It is not bright green in color, but dirty looking 

 and melancholy. The bushes are scattered irregularly at an interval of a 

 rod or five rods in the thinner thickets ; but in the denser parts they crowd 

 up against each other like the evergreens of a nursery. In such places you 

 see no longer the plain, but the level top of the sage growth stretching for 

 miles awa3^ This scraggy bush seems to subserve two general purposes in 

 the economy of nature. First, it furnishes the Arizonian cow with a dernier 

 ressort in the way of browsing. For a great part of the year, indeed, it is 

 her principal resource and comfort. The man accustomed to the sweets of 

 civilization enters some objection to this kind of forage for the reason that 

 it taints those curious substances alleged to be milk and butter. It should be 

 observed, however, that even this flavor of sage is not as bad as that infamous 

 weed called the ramp, which the cow of the Ohio valley used to get to the 

 utter disgust of all who lived upon her bounty. Clumps of cattle are not 

 infrequent on the Arizonian plains. They are more plentiful here than in 

 Southern California. A week or two later than the time here referred to I 

 saw these Arizonian bullocks, rather blue as to their meat, hung up in a 

 denuded state in the market-house of Los Angeles, a spectacle to gods and 

 men. It should be said, in this connection, that the cattle all the way along 



