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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



«£ i 



Photograph from Frederick Simpich 



DIGGING FOR WATER IN LOWER CALIFORNIA 



The long, boot-shaped peninsula has vast desert areas and ranges of barren hills which 

 lie beneath a blistering sun, but there are also numerous fertile valleys which are the haunts 

 of naturalists and big-game hunters. Here, also, hardy cattlemen prosper, their herds grazing 

 over extensive unfenced pasture lands. The enormous mineral resources of the peninsula are 

 as yet largely undeveloped, but perhaps its source of greatest potential wealth lies in its 

 cotton-growing regions near the California border. 



scarred walls still show plainly where 

 Apache bullets bit angrily at the thick 

 adobe. 



In the old church at Caborca an Ameri- 

 can filibustering party led by one William 

 Krebs, bound by a fantastic oath to 

 "free" Sonora, was shot to death. 



OUR COMMUNITY OF INTEREST 



Far up in the wild Sinaloa hills are 

 crude, tiny chapels, .built by hermit 

 priests. I met one old padre who had 

 not been outside these hills for twenty 

 years. He told strange tales of the hill 

 folk and their primitive life. One Indian 

 had lost a mule. He prayed that he 

 might find it — and did, but it had broken 

 its leg. To show his thanks, the Indian 

 made a votive offering at the chapel, a 

 tiny mule wrought from silver. But be- 



fore bestowing his offering he broke a 

 leg off the silver mule to balance the ac- 

 count. 



Such is the story today of this awaken- 

 ing region whose commercial future is so 

 peculiarly tied up with that of our own 

 Pacific coast. The purchasing power- of 

 its natural products is enormous. Even 

 now, in spite of the waste and hazard of 

 revolution, Ave buy from it each year mil- 

 lions of dollars' worth of ore, bullion, 

 hides, cattle, garvanzos, fiber, and hard- 

 wood ; and nearly everything it uses from 

 abroad it buys from us. 



Inevitably, when normal conditions 

 prevail, its development will proceed 

 along the same lines, and perhaps even 

 obtain the same final prominence, agri- 

 culturally at least, as our own State of 

 California. 



