Vol. 4. 



APRIL, 18n-.\ 



No. 1. 



COLLECTING IN THE GILA VALLEY. 



BY F. T. PEMBER. 



VVliile collecting in Arizona, I have stopped for a week, 

 on two occasions, at Gila Bend. This was the last of April, 

 1890 and again about the same date in 1891. Now this is 

 not a summer watering-place, nor pleasure resort of any 

 kind, neither is it a sanitarium ; and every time you go 

 there you wish you •' had n't come." The town consists of 

 a railroad eating-house and hotel, railroad boarding-house, 

 two or three little stores and saloons, and six or eight low 

 houses, utterly devoid of paint. There are no trees, shade, 

 nor grassy lawns. This comprises the American part 

 of the place. Besides there is an encampment of Pap- 

 anoes Indians, with a few ''Greasers.'' It stands on a 

 treeless, waterless, and almost rainless part of the Arizona 

 Desert (once the Great American Desert), in its scalding, 

 blistering heat, and beneath a nearly cloudless sky. It has 

 no excuse for being there at all, except that it is the nearest 

 point on the S. P. R. R. to the Gila River for a long distance, 

 and the company wanted a water-tank there. This they 

 supply from a pumping station on the river, six miles away. 

 That is why the town is there, and because it is the nearest 

 R. R. point to the river, is why I was there. I also selected 

 it because there are a great many giant cactus — the home 

 of several species of woodpeckers, pigmy owls, &c. — in that 

 locality. 



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