42 
THE SCIENTIST. 
the southwest can be irrigated trom 
ditches leading from the rivers, but 
the erea that can be thus "brought un- 
der the ditch" is comparatively small* 
Much of the arable land is too high 
to be supplied from streams and much 
of the valley land overflows in times 
of freshets and the irrigating ditches 
are filled up or entirely destroyed. 
This leads to the observation that 
when it does rain in the southwest, the 
water comes down in torrents. Last 
August, I was assured by a conductor, 
while on the Mexican Central railroad, 
that, a few days before, he saw a wave 
of rain water roll down over a mesa 
twenty feet high i. e. the wave was 
twenty feet high. Be that as it may, 
it was sufficiently high to cut out, at 
one stroke, several miles of track and 
followed down this track forty-two 
miles from Benson, Arizona, to Noga- 
leg, Sonora. More than halt of the 
railroad track for the whole forty-two 
miles was washed out. It took two 
days to make the trip going and the 
same returning, fare $24 each way. 
The company was unable for 29 days 
to get a train over the track. 
The country, in Sonora, had been 
damaged by the floods as far south as 
Magdalena. But thirty miles west, on 
the opposite side of the Magdalena 
mountains, there had been no rain for 
nearly three years. 
Southern Arizona had a bad flood at 
the time of my visit in January, 1889. 
Before this, there had been no rain for 
twenty two months. 
The best agricultural portions of 
Arizona are in the Salt river valley 
near Phoenix, on the upper Gila be- 
tween Tucson and Gila Bend and on 
the lower Hasyampa river. 
The Mohawk valley which is an en- 
largement of Gila valey above Gila 
Bend is a famous farming country. 
Between Tucson and Antelope Gap is 
a mesa or table land about three times 
the size of the state of Rhode Island, 
that would, no doubt, be a fine farm- 
ing country if it could be irrigated. It 
is apparently as level as a floor. 
An eastern firm Has undertaken to 
reclaim this entire area, but I cannot 
see any feasible plan by which it can 
be done. 
The mineral resources of Arizona 
are only partly developed. In the 
southwestern part of the territory near 
Ehrensburg is the famous "Vulture" 
gold mine that has yielded millions of 
dollars in rich ore. It was located by 
J. D. Cusenbary of Kansas City, who 
superintended it for nine years. From 
600 to 1200 men are employed at this 
mine. About fifty miles southeast of 
the "Vulture" is the famous "Centen- 
nial" located by Mr. Cusenbary iu 
1876. 
There are valuable mines near Phoe- 
nix, Globe, Tombstone and Prescott. 
The best undeveloped mineral country 
that I have seen in the territory, judg- 
ing from surface indications, is in the 
Music Mountains, in the northwestern 
part of the territory, north of the At- 
lantic and Pacific, Santa Fe railroad. 
Hackberry is the nearest station, being 
about forty miles from the mining dis- 
trict. 
Arizona has the only paying copper 
mine that I know of in the United 
States outside of the Lake Superior 
region. Possibly I ought to except the 
"Star" mine about fourteen miles from 
Albuquerque, New Mexico. 
The placer mines of southern Ari- 
zona and southeast California are juts 
