58 THE CLIMATIC FACTOR AS ILLUSTRATED IN ARID AMERICA. 



mound or platform 65 by 50 feet in size rises 8 or 10 feet. Nothing like this was found 

 in any other ruin which I saw in either Arizona or Mexico. The pottery also was unusual. 

 The majority was of the common type, terra-cotta with brown lines forming triangles, 

 feathers, or other patterns. Certain pieces, however, were of large size, bright red in color, 

 with black designs. These looked comparatively fresh, as if of late date, but the appear- 

 ance may have been deceptive. Other pieces were pinldsh-purple in tint with designs in 

 white lines, or else dark brown with purple designs. These, to one who knows nothing 

 of pottery, apj^ear to be older than the ordinary, more conamonplace ware. Some of them 

 were ornamented on both sides, a practise not noticed elsewhere. Certainly the shape of 

 the ruins separates them from others in this part of Arizona, and the unusual variety of 

 design and color in the pottery and its uncommonly fine texture suggest a higher artistic 

 development than is found elsewhere. Also the site is more absolutely waterless than 

 any other yet discovered. Whether all these things indicate great age and early abandon- 

 ment I do not know. The village was never large. Outside the rectangular inclosure 

 pottery extends thickly for only 600 feet, although scattered bits are found for half amile. 

 The village was apparently agricultural, although no cultivation is now possible in its 



vicinity. 



The Ust of ruins in the lower Santa Cruz Valley is not yet complete. Over 50 miles 

 from Tucson, in township 8 S., Range 7 E., near the corner of sections 20, 21, and 28, Mr. J. 

 B. Wright, irrigation engineer of the Santa Cruz Reservoir Company, showed us another 

 old ruin, about 3 miles southeast by east of Santa Cruz post-office, west of Toltec Station. 

 Some day the extensive projects of the reservoir company may possibly bring this region 

 under irrigation, but in 1910 no water had been secured in spite of a large expenditure of 

 money on a dam and canals, and the next year the company gave up its work. To-day 

 the ruins are still miles away from any region where agriculture is possible and from any 

 source of water, either for u-rigation or drinking. The center of the village is marked by 

 an elliptical inclosure of the usual type, which could not possibly have been a reservoir, 

 as it stands too high. Pottery extends to a distance of 500 to 600 feet about it. Twelve 

 miles south of Toltec Station, in an equally waterless district at the northern base of the 

 Sawtooth Mountains, the reservoir company in 1910 erected a large dam, now abandoned, 

 which was designed ultimately to be about 40 feet high, and to hold in reserve a supposedly 

 large body of flood water which, however, failed absolutely to materialize in 1910. At 

 the eastern end of the dam we rode three-fourths of a mile through ancient pottery. At 

 the western end, a mile away, the traces of a large village can be seen. During the progress 

 of the work on the dam various objects were brought to light, such as an image of a man, 

 another of a pregnant woman, a stone phallus, and some pieces of slate, very smooth, and 

 covered with carvings said to suggest hierogbThics. These are now in the possession of 

 Colonel Green, of Cananea, Mexico. In other portions of the now desert plain of the 

 lower Santa Cruz, far below the limits of any but the largest floods, the workmen came 

 upon numerous traces of old villages. In one case, about 3 miles southwest of Toltec 

 Station, or half-way from Santa Cruz post-office to the station, Mr. Wright came across 

 a drainage line which runs nearly east and west across, instead of with, the line of steepest 

 slope. Such a channel could scarcely be formed by nature, and hence Mr. Wright thinks 

 that it may be an ancient canal, possibly the continuation of the one which presumably 

 led to the ruin described at the beginning of this paragraph. It is still possible that the 

 construction of huge irrigation works such as those projected by the Santa Cruz Reservoir 

 Company, with dams miles in length and reservoirs covering whole townships, may gather 

 sufficient flood water to cause the region once more to be populated, but no traces of the 

 existence of any such thing in the past have ever been found. In the Salt and Gila valleys, 

 to be sure, old canals are frequently noted, but nothing at all comparable to the works which 

 would here be required. Hence there is scarcely the remotest possibility that they ever 



