144 NEW TRACKS IN NORTH AMERICA, 
thirty miles below Altar; but the average width of the. 
valley for this distance (sixty-three miles) scarcely exceeds 
three-fourths of a mile. On the San Ignacio River, villages 
are found all along its banks wherever sufficient water exists 
for irrigation; but so scant is the supply that as far from the 
mouth as Santa Anna the river bed is usually, except after 
rains, a broad sandy arroyo, all the water having been 
diverted and absorbed by the acequias belonging to the settle- 
ments higher up the stream, viz., Santa Magdalena, San Lorenzo, 
and Santa Marta. These villages, including San Ignacio, 
form an agricultural district which produces many thousand 
fanegas* of cereals, and supplies six flour-mills upon the 
river. Even the San Miguel River does not supply nearly 
enough water to irrigate the narrow bottom-lands which lie 
on either side of it. The three flourishing haciendas of 
Torreon, Labor, and Inigo, as they are worked at present, 
absorb nearly all the water between San Miguel and 
Hermosillo, a distance of thirty miles; and, south of the 
latter town, a dry useless valley widens out indefinitely 
towards the sea. There is much cultivation on the San 
Miguel north of the village of that name, and also on the 
Rio Sonora above Ures, where a considerable population can 
be well supported. These narrow valleys have supplied 
nearly all the food consumed by the mining as well as the 
agricultural population of Northern Sonora, and have, during 
many years of civil war, notwithstanding the ravages of the 
Apaches, exported a considerable surplus of wheat and beans 
beyond the boundary into United States’ territory, where 
Sonora wheat is a staple commodity. 
The Yaqui, Mayo, and Fuerte rivers alone—rising in the 
lofty ranges and plateaux of the Sierra Madre, and not, as do 
* 1 fanega (410 Ibs.) = about two bushels. 
— eS 
