Sept., 1918 FRANK STEPHENS-AUTOBIOGRAPHY 165 



After the end of the war the next year laborers were still scarce and I did my 

 part to help support the family. 



1 was fond of reading, and having a leaning toward natural history J 

 eagerly read everything in that line 1 could find. Living far from libraries I 

 did not see many books on natural history subjects. 1 remember reading a se1 

 of Mayne Reid's books, including the "Cliff Climbers", etc. 



Some years later the family moved to Illinois, and there at the age of 

 twenty-two 1 had the opportunity to take lessons in taxidermy— " stuff ing " 

 birds. It really was stuffing them, too. I was never satisfied with the results. 

 I think my preference was for botanical work, but 1 had no opportunity to get 

 started in it. At the age of twenty-four I married and moved to Kansas and a 

 few months later started on west with a pair of little mules and a spring wagon. 

 We wintered at Colorado Springs where I became acquainted with Mr. Charles 

 E. Aiken, then a well known ornithologist. He showed me how to make bird 

 skins and agreed to purchase ornithological material to be taken in New Mexi- 

 co and Arizona. Mrs. Stephens and I left Colorado Springs in March, 1875, 

 driving by way of Santa Fe and Albuquerque to the neighborhood of Silver 

 City, then a new mining camp, in southwestern New Mexico, where we stayed 

 a year, doing more or less bird collecting. 



In the summer of 1876 the Apaches were troublesome, with prospects of 

 worse times ahead, and as we were living on an exposed mountain ranch, we 

 decided that we had better get out. The Indians had stolen the horses 1 had 

 traded my mules for, but I bought a yoke of oxen and started on for Califor- 

 nia. We were fortunately not molested on the way, but settlers were killed 

 ahead of us and after we passed. We reached Tres Alamos, Arizona, in Sep- 

 tember, and stopped there a month, as this place was practically out of the 

 Apaches range at the time. Passing through Tucson and the Maricopa Indian 

 village we reached Yuma, November 24, crossing into California that after- 

 noon. At that time Yuma was a comparatively busy place. There was not a 

 mile of railroad then in Arizona or New Mexico, and the mails w r ere carried on 

 six-horse stages passing Yuma each w r ay every four days. Freight came by 

 ocean steamer to the mouth of the Colorado River, thence by river steamer to 

 Yuma, where it was transferred to freight wagons to be delivered to the vari- 

 ous government posts and mining camps. 



Ever since the Civil War we had used greenbacks for money, coin being at 

 a large premium. 1 did not know that California was on a specie basis and got 

 a jolt when we crossed the Colorado at Hall Hanlon's ferry, seven miles below 

 "Yuma. Our ferriage bill was four dollars and I handed Hanlon a ten dollar 

 greenback. He handed me back a silver dollar, the first one I had handled for 

 years. I said: "Y r ou have made a mistake, I gave you a ten dollar bill". He 

 said: 'This is California and greenbacks are worth only fifty cents on the dol- 

 lar here ' '. 



We had a hard time crossing the Colorado Desert, and when Ave reached 

 Campo the oak timber and the valleys looked so good in comparison with the 

 country we had just come through that we made a permanent camp. I con- 

 tinued collecting birds for Mr. Aiken for several months. The next summer we 

 came to San Diego and in the fall went on to Riverside, where I farmed one 

 year, and the next year to Wilmington, doing a little collecting now and then. 

 News of mining activities at Tombstone, Arizona, lured us back to that region 

 in 1880. The spring of 1881 I collected birds in southeastern Arizona for Wil- 

 liam Brewster and came back to California that summer, locating at San Ber- 



