42 



the Grand Caiion of tbe Colorado, the barrel cactus, animals that never 

 taste water and do not know how to drink, men who can run 800 miles 

 in five days, and the peaceful Pueblos, where men without yuile. vice or 

 crime, plead with the Great Father at Washington to be let alone, and to 

 have the Yankee school teachers removed. 



The desert is crossed by rivers fed by mountain snows, and supplying 

 water enough to irrigate some portion of the area less than two per cent. 

 Agricultural islands are springing up in the desert sea where seven crops a 

 year are harvested, each acre supports one person, and wealth is assessed 

 not so much by acres of land as by acre-feet of water. The lower Colorado 

 valley will become a little Egypt without the pyramids. Mining camps 

 will spring up and maintain their high pressure, uncertain existence, fed 

 by automobiles instead of camel caravans. They will live their day and 

 disappear, and the desert will remain the desert, witli all its highest values 

 untouched, its healthful climate, its Inspiring scenery, and the lessons 

 which the geographer, geologist, biologist, and artist may learn there. 



The Mexican plateau, a bit of the tropics lifted into a temperate and 

 semi-arid atmosphere, is the environment in which the American Indian, 

 on a maize basis, without iron or domestic animals, attalnetl his highest 

 indigenous civilization. I'erhaps for that reason the hand of the Spaniard 

 was not wholly destructive, and a blending of European and American 

 civilizations occurred. Of ir>,000,000 i)Oople SO i>er cent, are of Indian 

 blood and nu>re than half f)f those without a stain of white. With all 

 his faults, the Mexican peon is not lazy or vicious, and remains now, as 

 of old, the pure American at his best. Mexico is the land of cactus and 

 agave, of tortillas :ind frijoles, of chili and pulque, of silver .and maniK)wer, 

 of cockfights and n'Vf>lutions, of opportunity and m:ifinn;i. out of which 

 I', stable and prosi)erous civilization, more promising than that of Old 

 Spain, seems to be rising as rapidly as tropical nature and human nature 

 will permit. 



The Caribbean province lies in the equatorial zone of volcanoes, earth- 

 quakes, perennial heat, heavy rainfall and troi)ical forest. These condi- 

 tions attain their extremes for the continent in Central America, where 

 4,500,000 Indians, negroes, and mestizos are leavened with less than one 

 per cent, of pure European stock. The natural and human conditions are 

 less favorable than on the Mexican plateau. The most momentous things 

 it; the province just now are the Tehuantepec railway and the Panama 



