ALONG OUR SIDE OF THE MEXICAN BORDER 



71 



Just over the line from Douglas lies 

 Agua Prieta, from which point an Amer- 

 ican-owned railway runs south to the 

 mining town of Xacozari, where the 

 model mining camp of all Mexico is op- 

 erated by the Moctezurna Copper Com- 

 pany, an American corporation. 



Drab, dusty Agua Prieta, with its 

 sleepy peons and sad-eyed burros, has a 

 singular faculty of suddenly coming to 

 life and getting front-page publicity from 

 Boston to San Francisco. In its tumul- 

 tuous recent years it has experienced 

 everything from kidnapping, lynching, 

 and robberies to artillery duels with 

 Villa. Lately a person who coveted his 

 neighbor's ass was found swaying on a 

 rope, with this placard tied to his dan- 

 elins: feet: "He stole mules." 



Douglas is about 4,000 feet above sea- 

 level, with 14 inches of rain annually. 

 Ten years ago the land hereabouts was 

 empty. Today artesian wells are flow- 

 ing — some as much as 600 gallons a min- 

 ute — caterpillar tractors crawl across the 

 vast Cochise, Sulphur Springs, and Para- 

 dise valleys, and the remaining unappro- 

 priated land is fast being filed on. There 

 are three methods by which land is se- 

 cured : direct purchase from the govern- 

 ment, homesteading, and under the Des- 

 ert Land Act. 



West of Douglas, eight miles north of 

 Xaco, on the line, and quite hidden in the 

 Darren Mule Mountains, lies the quaint, 

 up-side-down, busy, hustling Bisbee. Its 

 main street runs up a deep canyon, many 

 of its houses clinging like pigeon cotes to 

 steep hillsides. 



In times of freshet, mad torrents tear 

 through it ; once water was several feet 

 deep through the lower floors of stores 

 and houses. "Tombstone Street" and 

 "Brewery Gulch" are suggestive of 

 earlier and woollier days. 



The popular Borderland Highway, 

 connecting El Paso, Douglas, and Tuc- 

 son with California, passes this way. 

 Part of this route hereabouts was built 

 with prison labor, under the "honor sys- 

 tem" of Governor Hunt. 



From Naco, notorious border village 

 astride the line, the El Paso and South- 

 western Railway strikes off northwest 

 for Tucson. To the southwest runs a 

 "branch of the Southern Pacific of Mex- 

 ico, serving the great Cananea Consoli- 



dated mines ( American owned) and con- 

 necting at Del Rio, Sonora, with the 

 Nogales branch of the same railway. 



\\ est from Xaco, conspicuous in the 

 vast grassy stretches of the San Pedro 

 Valley, the straight row of stone monu- 

 ments marches on, to climb into the 

 wooded Huachuca Range ; and a few 

 miles to the northwest lies the shell of 

 ancient, iniquitous, profligate Tombstone. 



WHEN TOMUSTOXE ACHIEVED FAME 



The baffling psychology of names is no- 

 where more strikingly shown than here. 

 From the day in 1878 when Ed Schiefflin, 

 dodging Apaches, slipped into this can- 

 yon with his burros and struck the ledge 

 that made him millions. Tombstone 

 achieved fame. Motor parties on the 

 Overland trail now pass this old pros- 

 pector's tomb — an odd pyramid of boul- 

 ders near the spot that made him rich. 



Here were such mines as the "Ground 

 Hog" and the "Lucky Cuss." Ore from 

 the latter ran $9,000 a ton. The very 

 name of the town drew the world's atten- 

 tion to it. Here one pioneer jester oc- 

 casionally issued the famous Arizona 

 Kicker, whose heroes used guns that shot 

 around corners and up stove-pipes. An- 

 other sheet is (or was) named the Epi- 

 taph: and hereabouts, later on, the lively 

 imagination of Alfred Henry Lewis gave 

 us the "Wolfville" stories. 



Climbing the Santa Cruz River west of 

 old Camp Duquesne, the line runs over 

 high, rolling grassy hills scantily covered 

 with stunted live-oaks, and fairlv splits 

 in half the important border city of 

 Xogales, entrepot for all the trade of the 

 Southern Pacific of Mexico. From this 

 point branch lines also strike off north to 

 Tucson and northeast to Benson. 



Through this gap in the hills that 

 Xogales now fills runs the ancient trail, 

 worn ages ago by Toltecs and Aztecs and 

 followed later by Spaniards and Jesuits 

 in their advance from Guadalajara to 

 California. Famous Father Keno (or 

 Kuhn, to give him his real name) passed 

 this way, and a few miles north of 

 Xogales, in the Santa Cruz Valley, the 

 ruined mission of Tumacacori (now a 

 national monument) still rears its bat- 

 tered head. 



Hard by lies the ancient Presidio of 

 Tubac, where for years a Spanish garri- 



