TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 591 
Mexican town consisting of adobe houses. Its harbour, however, is an excellent 
one, with deep water up to the very sbore, and well sheltered from every wind. It 
is the only possible mail station on the Gulf of California, and is some five hundred 
miles, or nearly two days’ steaming, nearer Australia than is San Francisco. The 
new Atlantic and Pacific line in its course through Northern Arizona also opens 
up a very important tract of country. Of all the Western Territories, Arizona has 
long been the most remote and inaccessible, and therefore the least known. It has 
heen neglected in turn by the miner, the stock-raiser, and the farmer. The aridity 
of the climate, and the presence of hostile Apache Indians, has had much to do 
with this, but it has been due in a still greater degree to the want of suitable means 
of communication. As the Territory is now provided with two distinct systems of 
railway, it is believed that the long isolation from which, since the days of the 
Spanish conquerors, the country has suffered, will be soon broken through. Arizona 
is a country of extraordinary mineral wealth. In many parts of its extensive 
territory, it offers large tracts of excellent land to the farmer and the stock-raiser. 
Its chief drawback is a want of water, but this can be supplied as required by irri- 
gation works and by Artesian wells. Coal, salt, and the precious metals exist in 
Arizona in larger quantities probably than in any of the Western mining territories. 
The copper mines are even now the richest known, but as the country is opened up 
still greater returns will probably be obtained. The area of the territory is about 
114,000 square miles, or approximately 73,000,000 acres; in other words, three 
times the size of the State of New York. The general topography of the country 
is that of a plateau sloping towards the south and west from an altitude of 7 ,000 
feet to the sea-level. The surface of Arizona is much diversified, and contains some 
of the finest scenery in North America. In no country of the world can the 
evidences of past geological action be better studied. The Cafton of the Colorado 
is a stupendous water-worn chasm, 400 miles long, and from a quarter of a mile to 
a mile and a quarter in depth. The scenery in many parts of Arizona is grand and 
impressive; in others, the landscape is little better than a desert. The whole 
country is still a strange mixture of the old and new. Life there is in its main 
features much the same as it was when Coronado, in 1540, led his bands of Cas- 
tilians through the country in search of the ‘Seven Cities.’ But this phase of 
existence is rapidly passing away, and before long Arizona will awake from the 
sleep of centuries which has till now weighed upon her. 
8. Preliminary Report on Local Scientific Societies—See Reports, p. 318. 
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21. 
The following Papers were read :— 
1. On the proposed Jordan Channel. By Tretawny Saunpers, F.R.G.S. 
2. On the Jordan Valley. By the Rev. Canon Tristram, D.D., F.B.S. 
3. On Kairwan. By Epwarp Ras, F.R.G.S. 
The author, who visited the holy city in 1877, gave a sketch of its past and 
present topography, with a more detailed account of its history. Till the last few 
years no city of Kairwan’s importance and antecedents was ‘so little known; for 
Christians could only visit it at great risk. In 1835 the Marquis of Waterford 
was stoned ; and Mr. Rae was cursed and threatened, and his servant had to escape 
for his life. 
Kairwan—founded, according to Mohammedan tradition, by divine inspiration 
—tapidly grew in extent and power. Its mosque with five hundred columns, its 
