The Old Yuma Trail 



107 



1891-1896, and the erection of the most 

 serviceable series of international bound- 

 ary monuments on the western hemi- 

 sphere — massive pillars of cast iron or 

 solid pyramids of cement-laid stone — 

 each so located that the next monument 

 and the intervening country in either 

 direction can be seen from its site, while 

 the position of each is established with 

 respect to neighboring natural features by 

 published photographs. The boundary 

 party was of men well known through- 

 out both countries ; the American com- 

 missioners, Colonel Barlow, Captain 

 Gaillard, and Astronomer Mosman, like 

 the naturalist. Dr. Mearns, were chosen on 

 account of previous achievements, while 

 the Mexican commissioners, Sefiores 

 Blanco, Gama, and Puga, were equally 

 eminent representatives of the sister re- 

 public. A report worth}^ to serve as a 

 model for future commissions, accompa- 

 nied by an ample atlas and a portfolio 

 of photo-mechanically faithful portraits 

 of the plains and mountains intersected 

 by the boundar}^, has been published 

 within a few months, while one of the 

 clearest pictures of the arid region ever 

 drawn is Captain Gaillard's "Perils 

 and Wonders of a True Desert."* 



The wheel ruts and mule tracks left by 

 the party seven years ago are still plain 

 along the trail, save where obliterated 

 by sand-drifts ; even the tent-pegs, ash- 

 heaps, half rusted cans, and empty pickle 

 bottles still attest the arduous work and 



*Tlie Cosmopolitan, October, 1896, pp. 592-605. 



frugal fare of the commissioners and 

 their colaborers ; for one of the charac- 

 teristics of the desert is the extreme 

 sluggishness of surface-changing pro- 

 cesses, a sluggishness hard to realize by 

 those who dwell in humid lands. 



After the passing of the boundary 

 parties, the old trail remained untrod- 

 den from Quitobaquito westward, except 

 by a road supervisor erecting guide-posts 

 in the portion lying withinYuma County, 

 and by three horsemen (an American, 

 a Mexican, and an Indian) in other por- 

 tions, until November, 1900, when it 

 was struck by an expedition of the Bu- 

 reau of American Ethnology. 



Such, in brief, is the history of one 

 of the most striking and picturesque 

 routes of travel on the continent. Trod- 

 den first in a prehistoric period known 

 only through crumbling ruins, then fol- 

 lowed for half a millennium or more in 

 votive journeys of Papago tribesmen — 

 the Bedouin of America— it was traced 

 by Spaniards long before the landings 

 on James' island and on Plymouth 

 Rock. Adopted by evangelists two 

 centuries ago, it soon became a line of 

 pioneering, a highway of colonization, 

 an arter}^ of royal communication ; next 

 it was thronged by the indomitable army 

 of argonauts on their way to open a new 

 world on the shores of the Pacific, and 

 later it lapsed into utter desert, than 

 which there is none more forbidding in 

 America. 



To be concluded in the April number. 



