92. NEW TRACKS IN NORTH AMERICA. 
entered a vast thicket of mezquit trees, through which our 
path led for the rest of the way. These mezquits cover 
many square miles in the Santa Cruz valley ; they are mostly — 
of small size, averaging 20 feet, but where the river 
comes to the surface—it is here mostly subterranean—they | 
grow into fine trees. They afford excellent cover for the 
Apaches, who are constantly “lifting” the cattle belonging © 
to the inhabitants of Tucson, and preventing agriculture from 
being carried on anywhere except in the immediate vicinity ; 
of the town. These trees would be most valuable if the : 
country were only quit of the red-skins, for they yearly — 
_ produce hundreds of tons of the most nutritious beans. 4 
I visited a farm in the San Pedro valley before leaving — 
Camp Grant; it was only four miles from the fort, and yet 
all the crops that autumn had been cut down and carried off — 
before they were ripe by the Aravaypa Apaches, and all that | 
remained of the stock was a few pigs. Half-a-dozen soldiers _ 
were kept at this ranche all the year round to try and protect 
it, so that the fort might be supplied with fresh farm produce; 4 
yet during three years this farm has changed hands thrice; — 
the first man was killed, the second was scared away by the — 
frequency of the attacks made upon him, the third is now 
thoroughly disgusted, and talks of settling amongst the Pimas _ 
on the Gila, a friend of his having converted seventy dollars : 
into two thousand by raising hogs in the mezquit bottom: 
lands along that stream. 
At Tucson I made all possible inquiries about the best way 
to reach Guaymas. My first idea was to go by boat from 
Fort Yuma, on the Rio Colorado, and down that river into the j 
Gulf; but I learned that no regular line, either of steamers: : 
or atin vessels, plied between these places, and that if 4 
Water communication failed me, it would be impossible to ae : 
