The railway from San Antonio goes westward across the cattle ranges to
the Rio Pecos, flowing for eight hundred miles down from the Rockies
in a region largely reclaimed by irrigation, and then falling into the
Rio Grande del Norte, the national boundary between Texas and Mexico.
This noble stream, the Spanish "Grand River of the North," comes out
of Colorado and New Mexico, and is eighteen hundred miles long. The
Southern Pacific Railway crosses the Pecos on a fine cantilever bridge
three hundred and twenty-eight feet high, and reaches the Rio Grande a
short distance beyond, following it up northwest and passing the
Apache Mountains, where at Paisano it crosses the summit grade at five
thousand and eight feet elevation, the highest pass on this route to
the Pacific coast. It finally reaches El Paso on the upper Rio Grande,
a town of twelve thousand people, having on the Mexican bank of the
river, with a long wooden bridge between, the twin town of Juarez, or
El Paso del Norte, the road over the bridge being the chief route of
trade into Mexico. The original Spanish explorer, Juan de Onate, named
this crossing "the Pass of the North" in 1598, and after long waiting
it has finally developed into an active town in cattle raising and
silver mining, and also a health-resort, its balmy atmosphere being
most attractive. The muddy river by its periodic inundations has made
a very fertile intervale, which has a population of sixty-five
thousand, and here are seen picturesque Mexican figures, the men in
peaked _sombreros_ and scarlet _zarapes_, and the women with blue
_rebozas_. Beyond, the route crosses the southwest corner of New
Mexico and enters Arizona, passing amid the mountain ranges to Tucson,
the chief town of the Territory, having six thousand people, a quaint
and ancient Spanish settlement, which has considerable Mexican trade.
It was originally an appanage to the old Spanish mission of St.
Xavier, nine miles southward, and it now thrives on its cattle trade,
mining and magnificent climate, being also the location of the
Territorial University.
To the northwest, in the well-irrigated valley of Salt River, is
Phoenix, the capital of Arizona, with fifteen thousand population,
the irrigation systems having produced great fertility in the adjacent
region. The Salt River is a tributary of the Gila, the latter flowing
out westward to the Colorado. In these Arizona valleys have been
disclosed the remains of several prehistoric cities, chiefly located
on a broad and sloping plain beginning at the confluence of the Salt
with the Gila, and stretching down to the Mexican boundary. At Casa
Grande is a famous ruin of a prehistoric temple with enormous adobé
walls, the Government having made a reservation for its protection.
These people were worshippers of the sun, and there have been
discovered the remains of many towns with large population, the Gila
Valley for ninety square miles disclosing these ruins, which are
relics of the Stone age. Irrigation canals made by these prehistoric
people, the oldest in the world, are also found throughout the region.
Extensive explorations of these ancient cities have been made, and
several have been named, among them Los Acequias, Los Muertos and Los
Animos, the last being the largest, and there being strong evidence
that it was destroyed by an earthquake which killed many thousands of
the inhabitants. The railway follows the Gila Valley westward to its
confluence with the Colorado, and here at the California boundary is
Yuma, another of the early Spanish missions to the Indians, situated
just north of the Mexican border, the Yuma Indians still living on a
reservation adjoining the Colorado, their name meaning "the sons of
the river." This town has its tragic history, for in 1781 the Indians
made a savage raid upon the mission, destroyed the buildings and
massacred the missionary priests.
The Colorado and its tributaries drain nearly the whole of Arizona,
and it is one of the most remarkable rivers in the world. Its head
branches have their sources in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, uniting in
the latter State, flowing four hundred miles across Arizona and
seventy miles into Mexico to discharge through a delta into the Gulf
of California. The river and most of its tributaries in Arizona pass
through canyons that are among the wonders of the world, exposing to
view geological strata of all the formations in their regular places
to the thickness of twenty-five thousand feet. At first, the Colorado
flows out of Utah and south into Arizona for one hundred and eighty
miles, passing through the Marble Canyon, so called from the limestone
walls, nearly four thousand feet deep. It then turns westward by
irregular course, flowing nearly two hundred and fifty miles through
the Grand Canyon, the most stupendous in existence, and having at
places six thousand feet depth and walls spreading at the surface five
or six miles apart. These huge walls are terraced and carved into
myriads of pinnacles and towers, often brilliantly colored, and far
down in the bottom the river is seen like a silvery thread of foam.
Major Powell, who first explored it in 1869, went through in a boat.
He calls it "the most profound chasm known on the globe," and believes
the river was running there before the mountains were formed, and that
the canyon was made by the erosion of the water acting simultaneously
with the slow upheaval of the rocks. The river has a rapid flow in the
canyon, winding generally through a lower chasm and having a descent
of five to twelve feet to the mile, sometimes with placid reaches, but
frequently plunging down rapids filled with rocks. The surrounding
country is largely volcanic, with lava-beds and extinct craters. When
the visitor first approaches the brink of the great chasm, he is
almost appalled with the sight. There seem to be scores of deep
ravines and enclosed mountains, the main wall opposite being miles
away, and the intervening space filled with peaks and ridges of every
imaginable shape and color, rising from the abyss below. There is a
trail down the side of the canyon, a steep and narrow path winding
along the face of the Grand View Gorge, giving startling glimpses into
ravines thousands of feet deep, and disclosing the massive
magnificence of this enormous abyss. Down goes the trail, one gorge
opening below another until the verge of the final gorge is reached,
in which the river runs at a depth of a thousand feet farther.
Everything is desolate, the vegetation sparse, and a few stunted trees
appearing, while the river, which seemed from above to be only a far
distant silvery streak down below, is expanded by the nearer view into
large proportions. This Grand Canyon of the Colorado is one of the
most wonderful constructions of nature in its stupendous size and
extraordinary character; with the myriads of pinnacles, towers,
castles, walls, chasms and profound depths it contains and the
gorgeous coloring given most of the surfaces. It is among the greatest
of the attractions that America, the land of wonders, presents to the
seeker after the picturesque.