VAL DE CHINO. 187 
admirably sheltered by mountain-walls on each side 1,200 to 
2,400 feet high, is especially adapted to the production of 
wine and fruits. Wild grapes are everywhere abundant. The 
few settlers near Camp Verde informed me that they had 
raised seventy-five bushels of maize to the acre, without 
irrigation; also wheat and barley. All vegetables, except 
_ potatoes, flourish in the greatest abundance. 
_ “Tn this valley, even to a greater extent than in the valley 
of the Colorado Chiquito, on the Mogollon Range, and in the 
Aztec Mountains, we met constantly the broken pottery, 
ruined foundations of pueblos, and abandoned caves, which 
indicate the former existence of that populous, semi-civilised 
race, which, for want of a better name, are called ‘ Aztecs.’ 
‘ Below the upper valley, but separated from it by a rugged 
; and tortuous cafion, is the lower valley of the Verde, twenty 
five miles long, and equally rich, and filled with Aztec ruins 
and pottery. These sheltered Verde valleys are, without 
doubt, well adapted for the production of cotton. 
_ “There is much good arable country around Prescott also, 
and at the heads of the Agua Fria and other valleys leading 
southward to the Gila. Numerous ranches have been estab- 
lished here, and crops are raised without irrigation. 
- “We now descend gradually to the Rio Colorado, whose 
valley is wide and fertile. Whipple pronounced the soil 
‘superior to that of the Rio Grande valley. Of course the 
climate has much more of a tropical character, the elevation 
above the sea being less than 400 feet, snow being unknown, 
‘and the winter sometimes passing without any frost. Both 
climate and soil fit it for cotton, tobacco, hemp, castor beans, 
Tice, and even sugar, to which products all the valley-land 
will, perhaps, be devoted, leaving the cereals to be brought 
down from the higher valleys of Arizona, or eastward from 
