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
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."
[Illustration: PETRIFIED GIANTS, THIRD FOREST, ARIZONA]
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.
[Illustration: 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.
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.
[Illustration: LOOKING THROUGH A PART OF THE RIVER GORGE, FOOT OF BAD
TRAIL, GRAND CAÑON]
"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."
[Illustration: SUWARA (GIANT CACTUS), SALT RIVER VALLEY, ARIZONA]
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."
Every journey in Arizona seems to lead on into an enchanted world.
The gray valley road, the curious mesa formations that stretch into
infinite distances; the mystic apparition in the Estrella range of
the Montezuma faces; the ruins of Casa Grande, which tell their tale
of a massive city that once existed here; the ruins on the Rio
Verde; the mounds and shafts discovered belonging to some prehistoric
civilization; the ancient watch tower; the painted rocks, with their
extensive hieroglyphics,--all speak to the archæologist in a language
that fascinates the imagination. Its three greatest features--the
Grand Cañon, regarding which there is neither speech nor language;
the Petrified Forest, and that Submerged Star known as "Meteorite
Mountain"--would alone make it the world mecca of scientists; to say
nothing of the strange ruins of prehistoric peoples, of an unearthly
beauty of atmospheric coloring, and of the contemporary scientific
interest of the great Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff, or the splendid
progress and development of the people. It might well have been of this
marvellous country that Emerson wrote:
"And many a thousand summers
My gardens ripened well,
And light from meliorating stars
With firmer glory fell.
"I wrote the past in characters
Of rock and fire the scroll,
The building in the coral sea,
The planting of the coal.
"And thefts from satellites and rings
And broken stars I drew,
And out of spent and aged things
I formed the world anew."
What is the world that shall be in this mystic Arizona? What, indeed,
was the world that has been there? Imagination falters alike before
the stupendous marvels of its past, the picturesque splendors of its
future. Its scenic grandeur will make Arizona a world centre; the
nations from afar will make their pilgrimage to the sublimest marvels
of all nature's revelations to this planet. Here will be sought the
counsel of the gods. The message of the prehistoric past and of the
undiscovered future will "give the law of night and day" in wonderful
Arizona, the land of magic and mystery.