"121 settlers— old and new 



they came from. In many cases the "when" can be 

 answered only in such general terms as "long ago" or "re- 

 cently," but the "how" is often pretty obvious. A few come 

 with the seeds of useful and ornamental plants or in the 

 soil around roots when the desired sorts are imported. A 

 great many were certainly what botanists call "ballast 

 weeds," delivered unintentionally to our shores by ships 

 which dumped here the ballast loaded at some foreign 

 port. Many western ones came mixed with the hay brought 

 by early explorers and colonists. In fact it has been pic- 

 turesquely suggested (though it can hardly be proved) 

 that some already well-established inland when first ob- 

 served may have been distributed along the way by Coro- 

 nado and his horsemen when they made their long trek 

 from Mexico into Kansas in the midsixteenth century, a 

 good fifty years before any colony was established on the 

 eastern seaboard. 



The finding of Asiatic, not European, weeds in parts of 

 Arizona and the Great Basin region would be a puzzle in- 

 deed, if it were not knov^ni that at one time alfalfa seed in 

 considerable quantity was imported by the inhabitants of 

 those regions from Siberia and Turkistan. And as is usual 

 in such cases, more was imported than the importers knew. 

 No sight is more characteristic of the wide-open West than 

 the tumbleweeds which go bowling across the landscape in 

 late summer or autumn and sometimes pile high along the 

 fences. They are not all of one species, but. one of the com- 

 monest in irrigated regions is the so-called Russian thistle 

 which is actually a Eurasian and must have been recog- 

 nized by the Indians as an importation because its Hopi 

 name means "white man's plant." 



It is an odd fact that the most completely cosmopohtan 



