MAGIC AND MYSTERY OF ARIZONA
"... The stars are glowing wheels,
Giddy with motion Nature reels;
Sun, moon, man, undulate and stream,
The mountains flow, the solids seem,
Change acts, reacts; back, forward hurled,
And pause were palsy to the world.—
The morn is come: the starry crowds
Are hid behind the thrice-piled clouds;
The new day lowers, and equal odds
Have changed not less the guest of gods."
Emerson
PETRIFIED GIANTS, THIRD FOREST, ARIZONA
Arizona is the Land of Magic and of Mystery. It is the land of the yet undreamed-of future, and it is also the region of brooding mystery, of strange surprise. Besides its stupendous Grand CaÑon, here are the caÑons of Chiquito, Marble, Desolation, and Limestone; the Montezuma Well, Castle Dome, the Four Peaks—rising to the height of several thousand feet, for hundreds of miles; the Thumb Buttes, San Francisco Peak, the Tonto Basin, and the Twin Lake—all of these phenomenal marvels of scenery telling their tale of the action of water and of fire thousands of ages ago; convulsions of nature which have rent the mountains asunder, opened chasms thousands of feet deep in the earth, and projected the bottom of a sea into the air as a mountain peak,—
"What time the gods kept carnival."
The gods have, indeed, kept high carnival in Arizona. Every aspect of nature is on a scale of Titanic magnificence. The caÑon systems of its mountain ranges; the indescribable grandeur which reaches its supreme majesty in the Grand CaÑon; the wonders of extinct volcanic action; the colossal channels cut by rushing waters; the unearthly splendor of the atmospheric effects, and the coloring of the skies,—all combine to render Arizona an expression of magical wonder. All manner of phenomenal conditions are encountered. The land is a red sandy desert, whose leading productions are loose stones (lying so thickly in the sand as to make walking or driving all but impossible) and pine trees, petrified forests, and cacti. The riotous growth of the cactus is, indeed, a terror to the unwary. But it is in sunsets and enchantment of views and richness of mines, and in marvellous curiosities—as the Petrified Forest, Meteorite Mountain, and the Grand CaÑon—that Arizona distinguishes herself. She cannot irrigate her soil because there is no available water. But the pine forests—some of them—produce lumber; the mines are rich, and the features of nature unequalled in the entire world; while the exhilaration of the electric air and the wonderful beauty of coloring quite make up to Arizona resources that are unsurpassed if not unrivalled.
Arizona is not an agricultural country by nature, nor hardly by grace. The resources are mining and timber. Still there are probably some twenty million acres capable of rich productiveness, on which wheat, barley, corn, vegetables of all kinds, and also rice and cotton, could be successfully cultivated if irrigation could be sufficiently effected. The largest area of agricultural land lies in the regions adjacent to Prescott and Phoenix. This Salt River Valley is rich in alluvial soil. The Gila Valley also offers, though in lesser area, the same fertile land, and the valleys of the Colorado, Chiquito, of Pueblo Viejo, the Santa Cruz, the San Pedro, the Sulphur Springs, and the great mesa between Florence and Phoenix, offer the same possibilities. The great problem of Arizona is that of irrigation, as most of the rivers lie at the bottom of inaccessible caÑons and present difficulties of access which no engineer can as yet clearly see a way to overcome. The conditions are, however, materially assisted by the rainy seasons, occurring usually in February or March and in July or August, when water can be stored. The rain itself is as peculiar in Arizona as are other conditions of this wonderland. It rains in sections; it may rain in torrents in a man's front yard while the sun shines in his back yard; or if this statement has something of the flavor of "travellers'" tales, it is at least typical of actual facts. Five minutes' walking is often all that is required to carry one into, or out of, a severe downpour of rain. The clouds follow the mountain spurs as invariably as a needle follows the magnet and a torrent may fall on the mountains above, flashing down in a hundred improvised raging cataracts and waterfalls, while in the valley below the sun shines out of the bluest of skies. No panoramic pictures of the stage ever equalled the pictorial effects of a thunderstorm in the mountains, when the forked lightning leaps from peak to peak in a blaze, through the air; when it dashes like a meteoric shower from rock to crag, and the thunder reverberates with the mighty roar of a thousand oceans beating their surf on the shore.
In Maricopa County, in the Salt River Valley, new and important conditions have been initiated by the government system of irrigation which has transformed arid lands into fertile gardens. The government has expended three million dollars in constructing the Salt River dam (sixty miles north of Phoenix), which is the largest artificial lake in the world. This reservoir will store one and a half million acres-feet of water, drawing it from the mountain caÑons miles away. Not only does this project mean an abundant water supply for a region heretofore useless, but rich returns as well.
There are few regions which so attract and reward the researches of the scientist as does Arizona. The geologist, the mineralogist, the ethnologist, the archÆologist, finds here the most amazing field for apparently unending investigation and study. Nor is the botanist excluded. The flora of Arizona offers the same strange and unique developments that characterize the region in so many other directions. The cacti flourish in riotous growth. The saguaro, a giant species, frequently attains a height of forty feet. A strange spectacle it is, with its pale green body, fluted like a Corinthian column, and its colossal arms outstretched, covered with immense prickly thorns and bearing purple blossoms. The century plant flourishes in Arizona. There is a curious scarlet flower, blooming in clusters, at the top of straight pole-like stumps ten to fifteen feet in height, which terminate in luxuriant masses of scarlet blossoms and green leaves, and grow in groups of from a dozen to fifty together, producing the most fascinating color effects in the landscape. This plant is called the ocotilla. There are plants which produce a fibrous textile leaf which the native Mexicans used as paper; there are others whose roots are used as a substitute for soap. The trees are largely pine, cedar, and juniper, though in many parts of the state the rolling foothills bear forests of oak, and the sycamore, ash, elder, walnut, and the swift-growing cottonwood are found along the watercourses.
COLLECTION OF CACTI MADE BY OFFICERS AT FORT McDOWELL, ARIZONA, FOR THIS PICTURE
"The echinocactus, or bisnaga, is also called 'The Well of the Desert,'" says Dr. Joseph A. Munk in some interesting sketches of Arizona.[4] "It has a large barrel-shaped body, which is covered with long spikes that are curved like fishhooks. It is full of sap that is sometimes used to quench thirst. By cutting off the top and scooping out a hollow, the cup-shaped hole soon fills with a sap that is not exactly nectar, but can be drunk in an emergency. Men who have been in danger of perishing from thirst on the desert have sometimes been saved by this unique method of well-digging."
Of the palo verde Dr. Munk notes that it is "a true child of the desert," and he adds:
"No matter how hot and dry the weather, the palo verde is always green and flourishing. At a distance it resembles a weeping willow tree stripped of its leaves. Its numerous long, slender, drooping branches gracefully crisscross and interlace in an intricate figure of filigree work. It has no commercial value, but if it could be successfully transplanted and transported it would make a desirable addition to greenhouse collections in the higher latitudes.
"The romantic mistletoe, that is world-renowned for its magic influence in love affairs, grows to perfection in Southern Arizona. There are several varieties of this parasitic plant that are very unlike in appearance. Each kind partakes more or less of the characteristics of the tree upon which it grows, but all have the glossy leaf and waxen berry."
The grasses of Arizona, are, in some places, very beautiful, of a rich velvety green; and the infinite varieties of wild clover, the gramma, the buffalo, the sacatone, and other grasses, are richly nutritive and offer good facilities for grazing. As a wool-producing country Arizona has no rival, the climate giving the best of protection to sheep with the minimum of care, and the grazing offering adequate means of support; and stock raising of all kinds, indeed, is destined to become a great industry in Southern Arizona.
The climate of Arizona can only be alluded to in the plural, as in the expressive phrase of one of Mr. George W. Cable's creole characters, "dose climates," for Arizona has all the climates of the known world. The range of choice almost exceeds the range of the Fahrenheit registration. From the mountain summit, covered with snow for at least ten months out of the year, to the heat in Yuma, which has scored up to one hundred and twenty-eight degrees or more, there are all varieties and every conceivable quality of atmosphere. In the main, however, the climate of Arizona is inexpressibly delightful.
Dr. Munk, who is one of the distinguished physicians in Los Angeles, has made a study of Arizona as a health resort, and of its conditions he says:
"The atmosphere of Arizona is not only dry, but also very electrical; so much so, indeed, that at times it becomes almost painful. Whenever the experiment is tried, sparks can be produced by friction or the handling of metal, hair, or wool. It affects animals as well as man, and literally causes 'the hair to stand on end.' The writer has on various occasions seen a string of horses standing close together at a watering-trough, drinking, so full of electricity that their manes and tails were spread out and floated in the air, and the long hairs drawn by magnetic attraction from one animal to the other all down the line in a spontaneous effort to complete a circuit. There are times when the free electricity in the air is so abundant that every object becomes charged with the fluid, and it cannot escape fast enough or find 'a way out' by any adequate conductor. The effect of such an excess of electricity is decidedly unpleasant on the nerves, and causes annoying irritability and nervousness.
"The hot sun sometimes blisters the skin and burns the complexion to a rich nut-brown color, but the air always feels soft and balmy, and usually blows only in gentle zephyrs. The air has a pungent fragrance which is peculiar to the desert, that is the mingled product of a variety of resinous plants. The weather is uniformly pleasant, and the elements are rarely violently disturbed.
"In the older settled sections of our country, whenever there is any sudden or extreme change of either heat or cold, wet or dry, it is always followed by an increase of sickness and death. The aged and invalid, who are sensitive and weak, suffer most, as they feel every change in the weather. There is, perhaps, no place on earth that can boast of a perfect climate, but the country that can show the fewest and mildest extremes approaches nearest to the ideal. The Southwest is exceptionally favored in its climatic conditions."
There is a legend that the poetic, musical name, Arizona, was derived from "Ari," a maiden queen who once ruled the destinies of the Primas, and "Zon," a valley, from the romantic configuration of the state, the two combining into the melodious "Arizona." The tradition is sufficiently romantic to be in keeping with the country it designates, and nothing tends more to simplify the too complex processes of life, not to say history, than to apply the rule of believing those things that appeal to one's sense of the "eternal fitness" and rejecting those which do not. The apostles of the simple life might well include this contribution toward simplicity as an axiom of their faith. At all events, as no other origin of Arizona's pretty name is on record, one may indulge himself in accepting this one with a clear conscience.
The authentic Spanish history of Arizona dates to the exploration of Mendoza in 1540. For nearly three hundred years—until the treaty of Guadaloupe-Hidalgo in 1866, when all the region north of the Gila and Mesilla valleys was incorporated into the area of the United States—the Spanish explorers and the Indian natives were in perpetual conflict, and it was as late as 1863 that Arizona received its name and individual domain as separate from New Mexico, with which it had been incorporated. At the time of the Guadaloupe-Hidalgo treaty Arizona did not contain a single white settlement in the north and west. Near Tucson and Tuba were a few hundred whites, but all the other portions were the domain of the Apaches and the Moquis. In 1856 the Hon. James Gadsden, then United States Minister to Mexico, negotiated for the purchase of this territory at a price of ten million dollars, and the Mexican colors in Tucson were replaced by the Stars and Stripes. On December 1, 1854, a memorial was presented to the legislature of New Mexico for a separate territorial organization and name of the new acquirement.
Although the Spanish civilization has long since receded into the dim historic past, its spirit is impressed in the very air; its zeal and fervor still, in some mysterious way, permeate the atmosphere.
Until 1863 Arizona remained a portion of New Mexico, the separate territorial government of each being inaugurated at Fort Whipple, near Prescott,—a thriving town of some six thousand people, named for the historian whose works are the unquestionable authority on matters of the Aztec and Spanish civilizations. Prescott is one of the young Western cities that has a great future. Its altitude insures it a delightful climate, the railroad facilities are good, and it is in a region of almost fabulous mineral wealth. The "United Verde" mine, one of the possessions of Senator Clark of Montana, is some thirty-five miles from Prescott and yields vast revenues. Within thirty miles of the town there are very large beds of onyx, one of which covers over one hundred acres. This onyx is found in all colors,—the translucent old gold, green, red, black, and white, with much in richly varied combinations of color. Prescott has an altitude of a mile above the sea and is a summer resort of itself for Phoenix and other Southern Arizona towns. It is a distance of some three hundred miles from Ash Fork to Winhelman, and Prescott and Phoenix are one hundred miles apart, Prescott being only a hundred miles from Ash Fork and Phoenix about the same distance from Winhelman. Near Prescott there is a curious spot which is not less worthy of world-wide fame than is the "Garden of the Gods" at Colorado Springs; although the "Point of Rocks," as this grotesque system of formation near Prescott is called, is little known to travellers. It is of that same unique sandstone formation that is found in the "Garden of the Gods." Ruskin declared that he could not visit America on the ground that it contained no castles; but had his vision included Colorado and Arizona, with their wonderful sandstone formations, he would have found castles galore so far as scenic effect goes. It is not alone the "Garden of the Gods" and the "Point of Rocks" that are marvellous spectacles, but all over the states, here and there, on foothill and mountain and mesa, these strange, fantastic, colossal rock formations arise, that have all the landscape effect of the castles and towers in Italy.
All the country around Prescott is alluring. On the branch road from Ash Fork of the main transcontinental line to Winhelman some three hundred miles south, there is an assortment of scenery which might be described as warranted to please every taste. There are lofty mountains pine-clad and green with verdure; others are seen barren and bleak, whose sides and foothills are only decorated with the dÉbris of mines. There are vast desert solitudes where only the misshapen cacti grow, looming up like giant skeletons in the air; and again there are glades carpeted with a profusion of flowers in brilliant hues. There are river-beds (arroyos) without any water and there are streams that go wandering about, in aimless fashion, devoid of regulation river-beds. Some of the arroyos, indeed, have streams running in strong currents, but they hide these streams under the river-bed, as something too valuable perhaps for common view. The clairvoyance of the scientific vision, however, detects this fraud on the part of the arroyo at once, so that of late years it is of little use for any well-regulated river to hide its current under its bed. It may just as well relinquish the attempt and let the stream run in an honest Eastern fashion, like the Connecticut River, for instance, which is staid and steady, like its state, and never undertakes to play pranks with its current. Since the scientist has fixed his glittering eye on Colorado and Arizona, all the gnomes and nixies have the time of their life to elude this vigilance, and they seldom succeed. The scientist relentlessly harnesses them to his use; and though a river may think to conceal its course by taking refuge under its bed instead of running honestly along above it, the effort is hopeless in an age when the scientist is abroad. It is said that there are no secrets in heaven, and apparently nature is very like paradise in this respect at least, for it is quite useless for her to pretend to keep her operations to herself. The specialist, the expert, surprises every secret she may treasure.
LOOKING THROUGH A PART OF THE RIVER GORGE, FOOT OF BAD TRAIL, GRAND CAÑON
Of all the rivers in Arizona no one has more entirely defied all the accepted traditions of staying in its place and keeping within its own limits than has the Colorado, which, not content with the extraordinary part it plays at the bottom of that Titanic chasm, the Grand CaÑon, is now creating an inland sea, named the Salton Sea, in Southern California. Prof. N. H. Newell, the government expert hydrographer of the United States Geological Survey, has given close attention to the Colorado of late, and of it he says:
"... The Colorado cuts in its course the deepest caÑons on the face of the earth. From the solid rocks where it has made them, through hundreds of miles, it has taken material down to the Gulf of California, and by slight but regular annual overflows gradually built banks on each side out into that gulf. These, in time, cut off the head of the gulf, leaving dry a depression in Southern California, considerably below sea level, known as 'the Salton Sink.' For miles of its journey the Southern Pacific runs below sea level. Ten thousand people, approximately, in what is known as the Imperial Valley, live below the sea level. A privately owned irrigation enterprise, on the Mexican side of the line, cut a gash into this bank of the Colorado which nature had been forming. The high waters came and man lost control of his artificial channel, with the result that the river thought best to pour its waters back into the depression which had once been a part of the Gulf of California. To get the river to resume its own course is no small task, and with it the Southern Pacific railroad evidently purposes to grapple heroically.
"The river is now pouring down a steep declivity into this basin, which is two hundred feet or more below the sea level. If this were allowed to continue, it would make a great salt lake in Southern California. This water has already risen to the point where it has submerged big salt works and fifteen miles of the Southern Pacific's overland track, forcing that company to build around the rising sea, and, unless its engineers succeed in routing the Colorado for its old destination, it will be necessary to rebuild a much longer piece of that road. Some people have argued that such a sea would affect favorably the climate of Southern California, but they forget that the great Gulf of California, jutting into the most barren regions of the United States and Mexico, seemingly has had no good effect on the climate of either. The Salton Sea would add only two per cent of water surface to that part of the country, and so hardly would do what the Gulf of California has not accomplished. Unless the break is restored, the river will pour into this basin, forming a very shallow lake, which would be almost a frying-pan under that semi-tropical sun. This would continue to rise until evaporation balanced the river flow, and then would fluctuate with the seasons of the year, shrinking in area during the months of the heaviest evaporation and slightest inflow.
"The gash in the river bank was cut by a Mexican corporation on that side of the international line, but the water is delivered to a number of American corporations, so that to-day several are concerned in the affair. It is understood that the Southern Pacific, when the river reaches its lowest stage, will put in a great force of men in an endeavor to get the river back to its former course. One great difficulty comes in the sugar-like material which has been eroded, in which it is extremely hard to insert any permanent structure. A pile one hundred feet deep will be driven into it, and almost as soon the water, working in under it, will lift it out."
The Salton Sea, at this writing, covers an area of over four hundred square miles, and is constantly increasing. The Southern Pacific Railway that traversed its border has been driven twice from its line and forced to lay new roadbeds and tracks. It is also creating great confusion as to irrigation facilities, both in the United States and in Mexico, within the region where it lies; and as a scientific event it is one of the first magnitude,—an act in the drama of nature made visible to all.
The Salton Sink has long been known to the explorers and visitors of this region. It was a vast basin of some one hundred and forty miles in length and sixty-five or seventy in width; the evident bed of a former sea, which had become a desolate and barren waste. Sometimes a mirage—a not unfrequent phenomenon in Arizona and Southern California,—would transform this long deserted basin into a phantom sea, wonderful in aspect. To what extent this transformation will continue defies prophecy.
Phoenix, the capital of Arizona, is in Maricopa County,—a county as large as the entire state of Massachusetts. The journey of two hundred miles between Ash Fork and Phoenix is one of the most uncanny and unearthly sort of trips, with mountains resembling a witches' dance,—full of grotesque wonder and romantic charm,—but the experience is almost like visiting another planet and coming under totally different conditions of life. Phoenix is both the capital and the metropolis of Arizona, and no city west of the Mississippi is more popular among tourists or is able to inspire a stronger sentiment of attachment among its residents. To some twelve or thirteen thousand inhabitants are added, every winter, from four to five thousand tourists. The city lies in the centre of the Salt River Valley,—that marvel of the Southwest. The most important and valuable agricultural region in Colorado lies in Maricopa County, of which Phoenix is the pet and pride. In this locality the visitor to Arizona returns to the normal day and daylight world again. The forest trees are not stone quarries, nor have meteors, wandering through space, buried themselves in its soil. There is no need of colossal magnetic appliances to seek to discover and extricate some submerged star. Nor has the earth opened and disclosed an Inferno, "bathed in celestial fires," as that of the Grand CaÑon far away to the northwest. The streams "stay put" within their legitimate borders, and are apparently as firm in "standing pat" as is the Republican party over a (new) tariff revision. Maricopa County pursues a way of peaceful prosperity, with no lapse into the vaudeville of petrified forests and buried stars. Her stars make their appointed rounds in the skies, and shine nightly upon the just and the unjust. In the northern part of Maricopa there are mineral districts of rich ores, gold and copper as well as silver, lead, and others, but chiefly the county holds her way as an agricultural region, indulging in no freaks. Canals radiate in every direction from the Salt and the Verde rivers. The Salt River Valley is so level that a theory prevails that in some prehistoric ages it was smoothed by the Toltec civilization, which even preceded that of the Aztec. Fields of alfalfa, miles in extent, smile in the sunshine, while cattle graze knee-deep in luxurious clover. Orange groves alternate with the apple and apricot orchards. The date-palm, the fig, and the olive trees abound. Beautiful homes stand in spacious grounds shaded by the dark foliage of the umbrella tree, through which gleams the scarlet of the oleander and the brilliant gold of the pomegranate.
Phoenix offers to the resident or the visitor a good proportion of the best that life can give: in good society, that which is intelligent, moral, cultured, and sympathetic; in an admirable school system; in churches of many denominations,—Catholic, Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Christian Science, and others,—all having their fine houses of worship and earnest congregations. There is an excellent and a constantly growing public library, and there are four daily and several weekly newspapers, business blocks that would do no discredit to any large Eastern city, a circuit telephone system completely equipped, gas and water works, free city and rural mail delivery, good hotels, a theatre, and an opera house. There are banks and a Board of Trade. There are clubs both of men and women. The State Normal School of Arizona is nine miles distant—in Tempe.
There are three railroads that centre in Phoenix which transport the traveller with the usual accepted ease and luxury of modern railroading; and a new road to form a link in a second Santa FÉ transcontinental line will then place Phoenix on a trunk road over which the Santa FÉ traffic will largely pass.
The winters in Phoenix are most attractive. From October till May there is a climate all balm and sunshine without the enervating quality felt in the tropics. The region all around has good roads, and driving and riding are most enjoyable.
Seventy-five miles east from Phoenix, in the Tonto Basin, the government is building a vast water storage dam which it is expected will liberally irrigate two hundred thousand acres of land which, under reclamation, will produce in rich abundance both agricultural and horticultural products. The climate and conditions combine those of the temperate and the semi-tropical zones and favor products grown in both. The Tonto dam will be, with the possible exception of the Assouan dam in Egypt, the greatest storage enterprise in the world. It will be constructed of hard sandstone imbedded in cement, making it as permanent as the mountains. It will be two hundred and eighty-five feet above foundations and only two hundred feet wide at the bottom. Above will be a lake about twenty-five miles long, with storage capacity for one and a half millions acre-feet, which means enough water to cover that number of acres a foot deep. Even to the best of cement, Nature has provided on the ground every necessity for construction. Along the hillsides above is being dug a power canal, to discharge above the dam, there to generate not less than five thousand horsepower,—more than enough for the demands of construction. When the dam is finished this power will be transmitted electrically to the vicinity of Phoenix, here to be used for pumping. The government engineers have made plans for eventually developing eighteen thousand horsepower, by harnessing the falls of the river and the canals.
The Salt River Valley has more than fifty thousand acres devoted to alfalfa, which sometimes yields six crops in a year. Wheat, barley, and corn are also grown, and the orange groves produce the finest fruit known in the Eastern markets, antedating by a month the California oranges. Grapes, apricots, and dates abound; and if Maricopa County does not literally as well as figuratively find that her land is flowing in milk and honey, it is certainly not for lack of the most favorable conditions.
The Arizona strawberries, too, are a feature of importance in the fruit market, as for both size and flavor they absolutely exceed almost any other in the United States.
All this sunny prosperity of conditions and loveliness of climate reacts on life. There is a poise, a serene confidence, and a charm of good-will and joyous companionship felt in Phoenix that give to this delightful young city an individuality of its own.
The great dam now being built in the Tonto Basin has made it necessary to destroy the town of Roosevelt,—a village of two thousand inhabitants, with its churches, schools, water-works, electric lights, and other appliances of modern civilization. "Roosevelt must perish," writes a press correspondent, "that a desert may be made to bloom. Already the marvellous engineering work is well under way. The walls of the narrow caÑon through which Salt River rushes on edge are being locked by a massive monolith of solid masonry, the highest arch dam in the world."
The writer continues:
"This wonderful structure of sandstone and cement will be two hundred and eighty feet in height from foundation to parapet. Placed by the side of an eighteen-story skyscraper, this dam would rise ten feet above it, while its length on top would be more than two city blocks. A turbulent stream, with its enormous floods, will beat itself into stillness against the masonry monster, its foam and spume lost in a deep lake twenty-five miles long and two miles wide.
"By day and by night the dull roar of dynamite breaks the desert stillness, and the caÑon walls go crashing down to furnish material for this structure. On the hill far above, the rock crushers never stop grinding the limestone, and great kilns, white hot, are burning daily hundreds of barrels of cement.
"When night comes, myriads of electric lights burst forth, weirdly illuminating a busy army of toilers working gnome-like in a shadowy caÑon. A star-gemmed heaven looks down upon a wondrous scene, unreal, awesome, and inspiring.
"This great work of the government possesses unusual attractions for the engineer and the layman. It is located in a valley which has been the abode of three races, one of which lived here when CÆsar sat upon his throne. In an age forgotten the cliff-dwellers built their eyrie-like homes along the caÑons of this stream, and in the narrow valleys the lines of their irrigation canals may yet be traced. Centuries later the Apaches came, and for many years their tepees dotted the basin. Then came the white man, who sought to reconquer the desert, which had resumed its sway after the cliff-dwellers vanished.
"The battle with unfriendly nature proved too much for the pioneer, and Uncle Sam took a hand in the fight. No problems could daunt his engineers. They laughed at floods and mocked at desolation. A dam site was discovered sixty-two miles from a railroad, and they proceeded to connect it with civilization by a marvellous road which winds its way for forty miles through deep caÑons, along the face of frowning precipices, over foaming cataracts, and across broad areas of treeless desert. It opens up to the transcontinental traveller a new region of compelling interest and of splendid scenery. Better than that, it provides an easy thoroughfare for the transportation of heavy machinery of all kinds and the supplies for the new community which sprang into life almost at a word.
"... Every stone that is laid in the narrow arch, which is to retain the foaming river now rushing through the caÑon, brings nearer and nearer the day when Roosevelt shall vanish beneath an inland sea. When the great dam is completed, in 1908, and its massive gates of steel, weighing eight hundred thousand pounds, are shut down, a rising flood will cover the site of the city with two hundred feet of water.
"The ingenuity of man has been taxed in this work. Its isolated position, the difficult physical conditions, the tremendous and unexpected floods, have tried the mettle of the engineers. The enormous amount of cement required was in itself a problem which forced Uncle Sam to turn manufacturer in order to solve it. Nature, having kindly furnished an ideal site for a dam, was thoughtful enough to provide materials near at hand for making cement. A cement mill was quickly erected at a cost of one hundred thousand dollars. The downward rush of the river was utilized for electric power to operate the mill, and many thousand barrels of first-class cement have already been used in the works.
"But while the city of Roosevelt, with the homes of its two thousand inhabitants, is doomed, a fair valley is to be redeemed in which the agricultural possibilities are not exceeded anywhere in the world. Under almost tropical skies, with a soil of wonderful fertility, the farmer in Salt River Valley will cultivate his orange groves, his fig trees, his vines, while his broad meadows will yield him heavy harvests of alfalfa six and seven times a year.
"The great lake which will be created by the Roosevelt dam is to be tapped by canals hundreds of miles long and extending all over the broad valley around Phoenix. Vast areas now absolutely worthless will be transformed quickly into blossoming orchards and purpling vineyards, and hundreds of happy homes will dot a plain where now the giant saguaro rears its spiny head and the Gila monster roams at will."
Life in the Far West is a continual series of the occurrence of such events as these. Its problems are largely solved by the civil engineer and the irrigation expert, who transform vast deserts to regions of blossoming beauty, change the course of a river, send railroad trains climbing the mountain peaks or penetrating beneath the range, and who are, in short, the modern magicians who work their will with the forces of nature. The National Reclamation Act is fairly recreating the entire Southwest.
The Gila River, which is the largest tributary of the Colorado, flows through the regions south of Florence, Arizona, and affords water to many fertile and beautiful valleys; and Florence, with the towns of Yuma, Tucson, Glendale, Bisbee, Winslow, and others, is fully abreast in modern life. Large department stores, public libraries, schools and churches, women's clubs, daily newspapers, good railroad facilities, free postal delivery,—all these make up the environment of a splendid and progressive citizenship. As the Governor of Arizona, Hon. Joseph H. Kirley, has recently said:
"Nowhere can a man who respects his neighbor's rights, with reasonably strict attention to his own business, go about with more freedom and with greater confidence of personal safety than in Arizona. Locked and barricaded doors are in most parts of Arizona a novelty. The professional thief is almost unknown in the territory."
The East—at least the portion of it that has not personally visited the magic land of Arizona—can form little idea of its marvellous resources and its potent achievements.
The statehood problem looms up on the social and political horizon, and there is a strong feeling that to force Arizona and New Mexico into union would do violence to the judgment and the feeling of the citizens of Arizona. For several years past the incipient possibility of statehood on these terms has aroused widespread opposition.
The local press voices almost daily the editorial convictions that such a union would be most disastrous to the interests of Arizona—a country which is simply a wonderland of treasure and rich and varied resources. Arizona is settled chiefly by people from the great South and from New England, the Middle West being hardly represented; its citizens are of the best quality of our national life, and to unite them with those of New Mexico—a large proportion of whom can hardly speak or understand the English language even, to say nothing of their divergence in race, requirements, and habits from the population of Arizona—would be imposing upon them a century's delay in realizing the grand ideals of education, moral progress, and economic development now prevailing in Arizona.
Phoenix has to-day a better public-school system than Boston, and other surprising degrees of progress might be related of many of the towns.
Hon. N. O. Murphy, twice a Governor of Arizona, has recently made an eloquent plea against forcing these two territories into union as a state. Ex-Governor Murphy was appointed by President Harrison (in 1889) Secretary of Arizona. Under President Cleveland he was elected the Delegate to Congress representing the territorial interests; and on the expiration of this term he was appointed by President McKinley the Governor of the territory. His experience has given him the most intimate knowledge and wide grasp of territorial conditions, and in a letter of three columns over his own signature to the "Washington Post," appearing under date of February 25, 1906, ex-Governor Murphy does not hesitate to say that were the Bill for united statehood then pending before Congress passed, it would be one of the greatest legislative outrages ever perpetrated in this country. "I refer particularly to the proposed merger of the territories of Arizona and New Mexico into a single state against the protests of the people of those territories," he added.
The ex-Governor points out these statistical facts:
"The area of New England, comprising six states, with twelve senators, is 66,465 square miles; the area of the territory of Arizona is nearly twice as great, being 113,916 square miles.
"The area of the territories of New Mexico and Arizona, now proposed to be merged, is 235,600 square miles, or greater than Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey, represented in the Upper House now by twenty-two senators."
The fact that the population of New Mexico is largely Mexican, and that of Arizona is mostly American, suggests a potent reason for the strong feeling in Arizona against this proposition. Their racial instincts and their business interests alike conflict. If they are joined as a single state, there will be continual jealousy and friction, and legislation to promote the interests of one-half the state will necessarily be at the expense of the other.
To the traveller sensitive to the spell of a strange, unearthly beauty, Arizona prefigures itself as the country God remembered rather than as "the country God forgot." It is at once the oldest and the newest of the states. Its authentic and historic past antedates the coming of the Mayflower to the rocky and desolate December shores of Massachusetts, while its future flashes before one like an electric panorama outspeeding wireless telegraphy. It is the Land of Magic and Mystery. The light is a perpetual radiance, as if proceeding from some alchemy of distilled sunshine. While Colorado is the Land of Perpetual Dawn, of an heroic and poetic achievement, Arizona is the region of brooding mystery, of strange surprise.
There are the music and pictures of Arizona in her fertile valleys, her wide rolling mesas; and the very melody of the wind harps meet and mingle with the organ strains of sweeping orchestral effects of the winds in the caÑons and in wild, desolate gorges where impenetrable twilight renders them a veritable No Man's Land. Mr. Aldrich's "Two Shapes" might have met in that uncanny region of the Petrified Forest. The very dance of the Brocken may nightly be seen in the midnight fissures and steep precipices of the Grand CaÑon.
It is, however, essentially the land of mirage and mystery, this wonderful Arizona! As one journeys about he half fancies that he hears on the air those magic lines:
"O birds of ether without wings!
O heavenly ships without a sail!"
Every incredible thing is possible in this miracle country, where purple mountain peaks quiver in the shimmering golden light, where ruins of remote ages stand side by side with the primitive mechanism of pioneer living, where snow-capped mountain peaks are watched from valleys that have the temperature and the productions of the tropics. Arizona contains unknown and undreamed-of resources of gold, copper, and silver. The state has the richest possibilities in mineral wealth; there are thousands of square miles of range lands; there is wealth of forests, although it is a part of the miracle character of this state of color and dream life that its forests are almost as much concealed from casual view as are its minerals hidden in the depths of the earth, for they are secluded in deep caÑons or they are high out of sight on the mountain summits. In fruits and flowers Arizona has the luxurious growth and lavish abundance of the tropics, producing grapes, figs, oranges, lemons, pomegranates, pineapples, and peaches,—almost everything, indeed, unless it be the apples of Hesperides.
Although Arizona has not the electric exhilaration and infinite energy of Colorado, it has a delicious quality, as if the very air were a caress. Though warm in the south, the heat has none of the enervating effect of the heat where humidity combines with it. The heat here is so dry, the air so pure, that there is little extreme discomfort even when the mercury soars to legendary altitudes. In winter all Southern Arizona is a paradise of loveliness. At this season the towns of Florence, Phoenix, Tucson, Yuma, and other points invite one to the balmy air, the luminous brilliant skies, and the nights, which are a glory of starry illumination. Northern Arizona has a perfection of summer climate, and the Grand CaÑon is destined in the near future to become one of the great summer resorts of the world. With the splendid facilities for comfort offered by the arrangements, the traveller finds all his accustomed conveniences, and the caÑon has literally all seasons for its own. There is one glory of July and another glory of January; there is a transcendent loveliness of June, and an equally indescribable charm of October. No month is without its special reasons for visiting at that time this most marvellous scenic wonder of the entire earth.
In remote ages Arizona was evidently an inland sea.
Montezuma Well, on the Verde River, some fifty miles from Prescott, is one of the strange spectacles of Arizona. The well is on an elevated mesa of solid limestone. It has a circular opening some six hundred feet in diameter, as perfect as if carved by a skilled workman. From the surface opening down to the water is a distance of some seventy feet, and the water itself is over one hundred feet deep. It is perfectly clear and pure. Near the well are several cave dwellings, and fragments of pottery abound in the vicinity. There are beds of lava, also revealing that the well is the crater of an extinct volcano.
There can be no question but that Arizona is one of the most marvellous regions of the world. Its interest to the tourist is not exceeded by that of the Yellowstone, whose mountains and geysers and strange color effects enchant poet and painter. For the caÑon system of the Arizona mountain ranges, the stupendous majesty of scenic grandeur which reaches its supreme aspect in the Grand CaÑon of the Colorado, the wonders of extinct volcanic action, the colossal channels cut by the action of water, the unearthly splendor of the coloring in sky and atmospheric effects, all combine to make this state the very embodiment and visible expression of magic and mystery.In the broken mountain ranges the detached peaks extend, with narrow, fertile valleys lying between; while deep caÑons and wild gorges, with rushing mountain torrents, still further diversify the grandeur of the panorama. Five great rivers add another impressive feature,—the Colorado, the San Juan, the Salinas, the Verde, and the San Francisco,—this system of rivers completing the most extraordinary combination of mountain, valley, mesa, and caÑon to be found in the entire world. Numberless extinct volcanoes and vast lava beds add their fantastic imagery; and the metamorphic rock strata, recording the most violent volcanic upheavals, tell the prehistoric story of the fiery molten flood which swept over all this region when the earth was new.
As has perhaps been suggested in the preceding pages, life in Arizona is by no means without its features of entertainment. These include various aspects, not to mention one that is by no means to be enjoyed in any of the great Eastern centres,—that of the exclusive annual festivity of the "Snake Dance." Chicago and Paris, New York and London, may find social entertainment in balls and opera, dancing and dining, but in Arizona one goes to this entertainment on the Painted Desert; and if in some happy summer of life one's horoscope has deflected his course into Arizona and Colorado, one comes to regard those fascinating localities with the devotion of a native of their sunny climes.After all, it is not length of time in any experience of life that is significant, but intensity of feeling, and one finds himself really living more intensely in a few weeks in the Far West, in all its wonder world, than in years or decades of his accustomed rounds in Eastern cities.
This entertainment of the Snake Dance is furnished by the Moki Indians at their camp some seventy miles over the desert from Flagstaff. There is no means of conveyance save by wagons. The journey is over sagebrush and sand, enlivened by stones and cacti. The horses can make only slow progress. But the air is simply delightful and full of exhilaration, and the particular desert over which those who fare forth for this Æsthetic spectacle must pass is the "Painted Desert," whose walls of rocks and mountains, brilliant in a dream of color, recede as they are approached, and thus the entire two days consumed in the journey are a perpetual delight to the eye. The wayfarers camp out overnight, and during the five days' journey—two days to go, two to return, and one to stay—their wants are, perforce, reduced to the most primitive. As the festivity lasts only twenty-eight minutes, it is certainly spending a good deal of time and energy in order to behold so brief a spectacle. But one is told it is worth all the fatigue and the time. It is a religious rite of the Moki Indians, and is a prayer for rain. The description of it is a literal one, for the dancers hold from one to three snakes—and rattlesnakes at that—in the mouth as they perform their strange gyrations. The dancers are the "braves," while the squaws chant a crooning accompaniment.
One student of this Indian rite has said:
"With the first glow in the east the priests hasten to the shrine of the Sun God with their offerings, the luminary himself being greeted with a prayer or with songs as he slowly emerges from behind the mesa in the Far East. Later the priests repair to their homes, and return to the kiva, bearing the ceremonial paraphernalia with which, early in the afternoon, they robe themselves in gorgeous array preparatory to the dance, which is given usually before the sun sets behind the San Francisco Peaks.
"As the priests emerge from the kiva, where they wait in line until all have appeared, there is the hush of expectancy throughout the village; the inhabitants now line the terraces, house-tops and every available spot around the dance plaza, all being attired in their gayest and brightest costumes. In single file and with measured tread comes the line of priests. Entering the plaza, they wheel about and begin a slow, short dance, the time of the step being accompanied by the shaking of rattles and by the singing of sacred songs. The dance is over all too soon, when the spectators return to their camps and the priests to the kiva, where great quantities of food have been brought for them. Finally, in a great feast, they break the fast, which, on the part of the chief priests, has been maintained for many days."
It is quite by way of being love's labor lost to visit Arizona during that period of time devoted to the Moqui Festival. Apparently the entire population betake themselves to this entertainment, journeying over the desert in their wagons, carrying with them their beds, their food, and every necessity, for except what they take with them they must do without. But as all the world, alas, cannot or does not dwell in Arizona,—a region in which any one sunset alone is worth the journey there,—and is thus deprived of the unique privilege of assisting at the Snake Dance, the next best thing, as a substitute, is to read the new work of George Wharton James (the author of "In and Around the Grand Canyon") called "Indians of the Painted Desert Region." It is the very gateway to a wide and deeply interesting knowledge of Indian life in Arizona and its relation to advancing civilization. It is the presentation of a series of wonderful landscapes in a vivid manner of word-picturing.
"Wild, weird, and mystic pictures are formed in the mind by the very name—Painted Desert," writes Mr. James. "The sound suggests a fabled rather than a real land. Surely it must be akin to Atlantis or the island of Circe or the place where the Cyclops lived. Is it not a land of enchantment and dreams, not a place for living men and women, Indians though they be?"
It seems that the Spaniards gave the name "El Pintado Deserto"—the Painted Desert."Stand with me," writes Mr. James, "on the summit of one of the towering mountains that guard the region, and you will see such a landscape of color as exists nowhere else in the world. It suggests the thought of God's original palette, where he experimented in color ere he decided how to paint the sunset, tint the sun-kissed hills at dawn, give red to the rose, green to the leaves, yellow to the sunflowers.... Look! here is a vast field of alkali,—fine, dazzling white. Yonder is a mural face half a thousand feet high and two hundred or more miles long. It is over a hundred miles away, but it reveals the rich glowing red of its walls, and between it and us are vast patches of pinks, grays, greens, carmines, blue, yellow, crimson, and brown, blending in every conceivable shade in a strange and grotesque yet fascinating manner. It is a rainbow petrified. It is a sunset painted on desert sands."
And here art and archÆology may revel. "History—exciting, thrilling, tragic—has been made in the Painted Desert region; was being made centuries before Lief Ericson landed on the shores of Vinland or John and Sebastian Cabot sailed from Bristol.... In the Painted Desert region we find peoples strange, peculiar, and interesting, whose mythology is more fascinating than that of ancient Greece, and for aught we know to the contrary, may be equally ancient; whose ceremonies of to-day are more elaborate than those of a devout Catholic, more complex than those of a Hindoo Pantheist, more weird than those of a howling dervish of Turkistan.... One of the countries comprised in the Painted Desert region is the theme of an epoch ... reciting deeds as brave and heroic as those of the Greeks at Marathon or ThermopylÆ; a poem recently discovered after having been buried in the tomb of oblivion for over two hundred years. Here are peoples to whom a written letter is witchcraft and sorcery, and yet who can read the heavens, interpret the writings of the clouds, deserts, and caÑons with unerring certainty.... A land it is of witchcraft and sorcery, of horror and dread of ghosts and goblins, of daily propitiations of fates and powers, and princes of darkness and air, at the very thought of whom withering injuries are sure to come."
One is tempted to run on and on in quotation from this fascinating book, which depicts the strange life and the marvellous scenery in the country "where atmospheric colorings are so perfect and so divinely artistic that desolate deserts are made dreams of glory."
Harriet Monroe, the Chicago poet, playwright, and most charming of essayists, who by no means limits her sÉances with the Muses to those particular hours in which she dons her singing robes, has given this prose-poem picture of a scene on the "Painted Desert":
"The rocks lay in belts as red as flame, yellow as gold, purple as violets, and they seemed to shine of their own light; the City of Rocks, flaming red, and high as mountains; one thousand foot walls sheer to the desert, all carved in needles, spires, towers, castles—the most tremendous thing on earth—there it lay!"
Of the sudden climatic changes of the desert Professor James says:
"I have been almost frozen in its piercing snowstorms; choked with sand in its whirling sandstorms; wet through ere I could dismount from my horse in its fierce rainstorms; terrified and temporarily blinded by the brilliancy of its lightning storms, and almost sunstruck by the scorching power of the sun in its desolate confines.... With my horses I have camped, again and again, waterless, on its arid and inhospitable rocks and sands, and prayed for morning, only to resume our exhausting journey in the fiercely beating rays of the burning sun; longing for some pool of water, no matter how dirty, how stagnant, that our parched tongues and throats might feel the delight of swallowing something fluid. And last year (1902), in a journey to the home of the Hopi, my friends and I saw a part of this desert covered with the waters of a fierce rainstorm as if it were an ocean, and the 'dry-wash' of the Oraibi the scene of a flood that for hours equalled the rapids of the Colorado River. Desert though it is in the main,—barren, wild, and desolate,—here and there within its boundaries are fertile valleys, wooded slopes, and garden spots as rich as any on earth; and the people who make their dwelling-place in this inhospitable land present characteristics as strongly contrasted as those of nature. Here are peoples of uncertain and mysterious origin whose history is preserved only in fantastic legends and traditional songs; whose government is as pure and perfect as that of the patriarchs, and possibly as ancient, and yet more republican than the most modern of existing governments; peoples whose women build and own the houses, and whose men weave the garments of the women, knit the stockings of their own wear, and are as expert with needle and thread as their ancestors were with bow and arrow, obsidian-tipped spear, or stone battle-axe.... Here are peoples of stupendous religious beliefs. Peoples who can truthfully be designated as the most religious of the world, yet peoples as agnostic and sceptic, if not as learned as Hume, Voltaire, Spencer, and Ingersoll. Peoples to whom a written letter is witchcraft and sorcery, and yet who can read the heavens, interpret the writings of the woods, deserts, and caÑons with a certainty never failing.... Here are intelligent farmers who for centuries have scientifically irrigated their lands and yet who cut off the ears of their burros to keep them from stealing corn.... Peoples who pray by machinery as the Burmese use their prayer wheels, and who 'plant' supplications as a gardener plants trees and shrubs.... Peoples who are pantheists, sun worshippers, and snake dancers, yet who have churches and convents built with incredible labor and as extensive as any modern cathedral. Peoples whose conservatism in manners and religion surpasses that of the veriest English Tories; who for hundreds of years have steadily and successfully resisted all efforts to 'convert' and change them, and who to-day are as firm in their faiths as ever.... Peoples to whom fraternal organizations and secret societies, for men and women alike, are as ancient as the mountains they inhabit, whose lodgerooms are more wonderful, and whose signs and passwords more complex, than those of any organization of civilized lands and modern times."
One of the most weird and fascinating experiences in Arizona is a visit to "Assamanuda," the "Country of the Departed Spirits." This is the poetic name the Iroquois Indians give to the Painted Desert. This vast plain stretches away with gigantic horizontal columns, the remains of vast layers of sedimentary rock, from which the rains of prehistoric ages have washed away the connecting earth, and the columns are streaked and mottled with scarlet, due, it is said, to the oxidization of particles of feldspar in the granite of which these rocks are composed. Here may be witnessed in its perfection the Fata Morgana. In the air appear palaces, hanging gardens, and temples; fountains and wonderful parks adorned with sculpture; towers and turreted castles; beautiful villas with terraced lawns and cascades of water thrown high in the air; rose gardens and hills, where the deer and the antelope are seen; all these and other visions of loveliness are pictured on the air in a perfection of light and shading. It is not difficult to fancy that one is really gazing into the ethereal world, beyond the pearly gates, and gazing indeed into "the country of departed spirits."All Northern and Northeastern Arizona are comprised in the region,—Nature's picture gallery. Dr. Newberry, the geologist, who explored all the regions east of the upper Colorado as far as the junction of the Green and the Grand rivers, thus pictures one view of the plateau:
"Directly south the view was bounded by the high and distant mesas of the Navajo country, succeeded in the southwest by the still more lofty battlements of the great white mesa formerly seen from the Moqui pueblos. On these high tablelands the outlines were not only distinctly visible, but grand and impressive at the distance of a hundred miles. Nearly west a great gap opened in the high tablelands through which the San Juan flows to its junction with the Colorado. The distance between the mesa walls is perhaps ten miles, and scattered over it are castle-like buttes and slender towers, none of which can be less than a thousand feet in height, their sides absolutely perpendicular and their forms wonderful imitations of architectural art. Illuminated by the setting sun the outlines of these singular objects come out sharp and distinct with such exact similitude to art that we could hardly resist conviction that we beheld the walls and towers of some ancient Cyclopean city, hitherto undiscovered."
