1892 



C.LKANINIJS IN liEK CULTURE. 



815 



ill the clayiinic: and there is so little dew tliat 

 people sleep outdoors in th(> dooryard. witlidiii 

 any st>it. oi troubl«> from dampness. In fai-t. 

 there are times w hen onidoors is ahuut all the 

 place where one can sleep. Dnring this heated 

 tornt there are no flies to botlier cattle and 

 horses: in fact. I believe they have very few 

 Hies or any thinii of thai sort at (inn season. It. 

 may be too iiot for the Hies, oi' may be they have 

 not fiot introduced yet. 



I am now ij<.>infr to tell you a wonderful story. 

 .\ man who was tradiuix in my brother's drug- 

 store brought in some e^'tis and set tliem down, 

 and forsiot to take them when he went out. 

 They linally set the egj^s back on a shelf, think- 

 ing tlii> owner wotild be back for them sooni-r 

 or later. Time passed, and the eggs were for- 

 gotten until somebody heard chickens peeping: 

 and. sure enough, theie they were, breaking 

 their way out of the shells, without any help 

 from incubator or moiher hen: and yet, witli 

 exceedingly high prices for both poultry and 

 eggs, nobody has ever yet utilized tliis wonder- 

 ful opportunity for h;i\ing a self-tnanaging 

 incubator. .lust think of it— buy your eggs. 

 spread them out and take care of the chickens 

 when they hatch! I'eriiaps. however, the 

 weatlier is not always as favorable as it hap- 

 pened to be at just that particular time. I am 

 daily expecting to hear of soiue wonderful 

 tilings from this queei- Tei'ritory of Arizona. 

 Yes. and there are some magniticent enlerprlses 

 already underway. One of the tirm of U. M. 

 Ferry X: Co.. of Detroit. Mich., has already pur- 

 chased some immense tracts of land in the 

 neighborhood of Tempe. and they are con- 

 structing enormous iriigating - canals — yes. 

 canals is the word, for some of them would run 

 a canal-boat, without question. These irrigat- 

 ing-canals take the water from Salt River, 

 through tracts of country as yet unused; and 

 already they have demoiistrated what may be 

 done, by their success on little patches, in mak- 

 ing the wilderness blossom as the rose. It is 

 reported that Ferry is going to raise his seeds — 

 at least a great part of them— in this wonder- 

 fully favorable climate. While we were there, 

 an immense machine for excavating was being 

 drawn bv. I think, sixteen or eighteen horseo. 

 A suitable plow, attached to the great engine, 

 turned a fuiTow directlv on a moving platform. 

 This platform was carried upon rollers until it 

 dumped the dirt down on the side of the canal. 

 Th(! consecjuence was, the banks were just as 

 round and even as a landscape gardener could 

 make them. Tliey kindly invited us to get up 

 on the machine and go a "bout "with them. 

 When I looked away in the distance, however, 

 and asked them how far one of those '■ bouts '" 

 meant, and was informed that it was two milcj^ 

 long. I did not feel able to spare the time. To 

 see work of this kind going on away out in the 



♦Since the above was written, our stenoRrapher, 

 W. P. Root, .sugge.sts: "The larvae of Hies and simi- 

 lar insects can not develop in a climate so destitute 

 of moisture as is that of Arizona. The conii)k'le 

 desiccation of meat that occurs wlien e.vposod in 

 such arid climates as lh;i I of Arizona and parts of 

 Palestine is well illu.strate(l in the case of Samson, 

 who found the carcass of a lion which he had lately 

 slain, and it was so dry that the bees had filled it 

 with Comb. This showh t hat the tiesh was odorless 

 and hard, and heiii-e nol moist enough to furnish 

 larvK- the means of suli-~istence. which, as in the 

 ease of all forms of life in their first stages, consists 

 almost entirely of li<iuid fnod. It might he suggest- 

 ed, then, that the bees ni.idea mistake in building 

 in such a place if their larvie could not develop; 

 but it must be reinembereil that the l)ei's can and 

 ■do supply the necessary moisture to thiir larvae, 

 while flies pay no attention to theii's after the egg is 

 Jaid." 



wilds of an uninhabited desert was w me not 

 only wonderful, but most fascinating. It v(!ri- 

 lies the words of Holy Writ: "For in the? wil- 

 derness shall waters break out, and streams in 

 the desert. The parched ground shall become 

 a i)ool, and the thirsty land springs of wati-r." 



All along this river, great <'nti'r'|)rises of this 

 kind are starting u(): and the only limit, so far 

 as I can see, will i)e when all the water shall be 

 utilized. Even then, by means of dams, great 

 rescM'voirs will be hlled fi'om the waters that 

 run to waste in the winter time. Still further, 

 where water runs through these desert sands, 

 great quantities of it percolate through the soil 

 and are lost. Cementing tin; sides and bottotns 

 of these ditches, as they do at Riverside, Cal., 

 will increases the amount of water for irrigat- 

 ing, very considerably. 



Oh, yes I I must tell you about the ruins and 

 the broken pottery. Every little while on these 

 desert places we meet with mounds, or sand- 

 banks. Where this sand is scooped away, 

 ancient dwellings are disclosed; and th(! ground 

 all about these dwellings, and. in fact, all 

 through this moun.d, is thickly strcnvn with 

 broken [jottery — not only plain pottery, but 

 fragments of painted and decoiated ware. 

 These fragm(mts are oftentimes so plentiful 

 that they almost seem to cover the ground. It 

 is like tramping around the pottery-shops here 

 in the East. T|ie decorations seem to run in a 

 pariicular line of ornamentation, indicating 

 that the people were a great deal alike, or had 

 the same habits and fashions. Implements for 

 grinding theii' corn are also found. In fact. 

 .Arizona is full of curiosities to make glad the 

 heart of the arclueolosist. One commences, 

 when he Hrst sees these things, to load himself 

 down with specimens. Finally, when he dis- 

 covers they are everywhere, he loses interest 

 and enthusiasm. It has been thought, I be- 

 lieve, that these relics were left by the mound- 

 builders; but when we discover that the present 

 inhabitants— that is, the Indians— still grind 

 their grain with utensils very similar, and 

 ornament and paint their pottery in a manner 

 quite like these broken fragments, the conclu- 

 sion forces itself upon our minds that these 

 very Indians may have done this work thou- 

 sands of years ago. They certainly used Salt 

 River for irrigating, inuch as we do now, for 

 great irrigating-canals are found almost every- 

 where. In fact, one company utilized one of 

 ihese ancient water-courses to an extent that 

 saved them several thousand dollars: and I am 

 told that, even up on the mesas on the moun- 

 tains there are remains of irrigating-ditches 

 showing that the Indians must have had a sys- 

 tem of canals that carry the water to points 

 that would seriously trouble our best modern 

 hydraulic engineers. How did the sand get 

 over these ancient dwellings? Well, it has 

 been suggested that it is the work of the wind. 

 Any .sort of obstruction in the desert, even a 

 bush, catches the sand, and it piles up around 

 it: and as ages pass, it is not strange that con- 

 siderable hills are jiiled up in just the way that 

 snow frequently piles up into immense snow- 

 banks, where it lies on the ground and accumu- 

 lates for a long time. 



Orange-growing in Arizona is, in my opinion, 

 as yet haidly settled. Last season a carload or 

 two of the tinest oi'anges that perhaps evcir 

 grew ;inywhere were put on the market, and 

 they claim they can produce them several weeks 

 earlier than in California. Since then, how- 

 ever, a severe frost has made considerable 

 havoc with the same, trees that bore this nice 

 fruit. Perhaps some of our Arizona readers in 

 the vicinity of Ph(enix and Tempe will tell me 

 how the trees "panned out" since the time of 

 which I speak. 



