Maricopa Wells, I could plainly see that the high mountains to the
north of the Gila, standing in a bold relief against the sky, were
covered at their summits with a cap of snow, glistening in the pleasant
sun of the valley, where we were. Abundance of rain had fallen
throughout the Gila valley this season, but no cold weather had come
as yet; we naturally concluded that the rain of the valley was snow on
the tops of the mountains. In the day time we found it so pleasant that
bathing was our constant practice, though the nights were cool and damp
from heavy dews. I am informed that all or most of these valleys north
of the Gila have a rich soil, capable of sustaining a large population.
I trust, on some future trip, to be able to explore them, as they are
situated within what is likely to become a portion of the new Territory
of Arizona, through the whole length of which our line passes. It was
among some of the valleys to which I refer, that John R. Bartlett,
esq., found evidences of a race of men long since extinct, who must
have been superior to the present Indians of the country.
At present we have no good road directly over the coast range of
mountains from Lassator’s ranch to Vallecito on the desert, but the
enterprise of the people of San Diego will secure us one at an early
day. When I came over the mountains on my way east, there was a large
working party of Indians, under Mr. Lassator, diligently using the
means which had been subscribed in the county for a road over the
mountains.
Wood, water, and grass, are the emigrant’s necessities in crossing our
continent. Over our route we have enough of these for all purposes of
staging or emigration. Through the country over which we pass, though
there is enough water for emigration and staging, yet there is but
one river not usually fordable; I refer to the Colorado of the West.
This is a great deal in its favor as a stage road. If it were a heavy
timbered country, it would not be likely to be so well grassed, as
it would be sure to have large rivers troublesome to cross, and need
an immense labor cutting down timber to open a road. As to grass, it
is wonderfully provided all the way to our Maricopa station. Wood is
generally scarce on our route. From San Antonio to San Felipe creek,
a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, there is an abundance of
wooded country; post oaks and mezquit flats are quite numerous. Along
Devil’s river, for a distance of twenty miles, there is plenty of wood.
At Forts Lancaster and Davis, oak wood is hauled from a distance
of seven miles to supply the military posts. Along the Rio Grande
universally the fuel is the root of the mezquit tree, a sort of
underground forest; it burns with as hot a fire as hickory wood, and
makes superior charcoal. Cotton-wood is used along the Rio Grande
valley, being the fuel used in some places. We found wood scarce all
the way from the Rio Grande to the Maricopas; from thence to Fort Yuma
along the Gila abundant; then it is scarce over the desert; at the
watering places, however, enough can be found in spots not remote from
the wells; once among the San Diego mountains there is wood enough.
Over these portions of our road where we find no wood at the springs
or watering holes, and for want of time cannot wander off among the
mountain gulches to look for it, we secure enough for all purposes of
cooking from the great abundance of roots generally found just cropping
out of the ground; these make an excellent fire.
An examination of my table of distances will show no want of water
along the route; all my measurements are to and from well known
watering places. From San Antonio our road is extremely well watered
until we reach the head of the San Pedro or Devil’s river, a distance
of 218 miles; going west thence, we have a jornada of forty-four
miles; thence another of thirty miles, between permanent roads, on
to the Pecos. In the rainy season there are plenty of places in this
distance where the water stands in natural tanks in the rocks, or in
cañons. This stretch of forty-four miles is the longest we have on
the road between permanent water stations; it forms however no great
obstacle to staging. We haul water for ourselves in kegs, and the
mules, having to go about twelve to sixteen hours without it, do not
suffer in consequence. We have no scarcity of water in Arizona for our
present purposes.--(See schedule of distances.) Our watering places on
the desert west of Fort Yuma are by no means far apart, but the supply
is limited at all times. It will be a matter of absolute necessity to
enlarge them before the overland emigration of this spring reaches the
desert. The improvement of those now used, as well as the digging of
others, will be very easily accomplished.
I am of opinion that the chances of procuring water by boring artesian
wells on the elevated table lands, over which our road runs, may
be considered as very limited. At any rate, as a practical mode of
procuring water for us, it will not do. Supposing Captain Pope should
demonstrate the feasibility of boring these artesian wells, even then
private individuals cannot afford to make them, neither can they wait
for government to do so. We should be compelled, in staging across the
continent at a rate of speed necessitating the erection of stations,
to adopt the old Mexican method of building tanks wherever the natural
formation of the country admits of it which it does in numerous places
along our road.
As for grass, the country through which our road runs is unequalled as
a grazing country, in the opinion of practiced men acquainted with the
subject. I have heard farmers pronounce the gramma and mezquit grass
nearly equal to clover. There is a peculiarity of the grass of this
section which adapts it most admirably to our purpose; when appearing
dried up and dead, it contains life and nutriment; an examination will
show this on plucking it. When the rains come, instead of our having
to wait wholly for new grass to spring up, we find the old dried grass
renewing its life, becoming green again, until in a few days the
country is covered with an excellent crop of grass, as good as if it
had been growing many weeks.
Many of the finest ranches or grazing farms in the State of Sonora
were once located in what is now called Arizona; the buildings are at
present deserted; the inhabitants have fled from the Apaches, who stole
their cattle, as far as possible destroyed the buildings, and murdered
or carried into captivity the inhabitants.
The section of the country along the Gila river is commonly pronounced
by emigrants the worst portion of the whole southern road across our
continent; but even along this river, though it is not superabundantly
supplied with grazing lands, no one need let their animals suffer for
the want of food. Travellers must take some care in examining to the
right and left of the road. To those who have just been passing over
the finest grazing lands in the world, where a range of a few hundred
yards would suffice for their teams anywhere along the road, the Gila
naturally seems a desert. As a fair illustration of the grazing in
Arizona, I would state that an overheated horse or mule will actually
founder on the rich gramma grass as he would on clover. On nearly all
the hills found along the Gila river spots of gramma and quinta or
bunch grass are scattered in places. Young willows also grow along the
river banks, which are good food for animals. A weed much liked by them
and very nutritious is found in many places along the bottoms. Mules
are also fond of the fallen leaves of the mezquit tree. By crossing
the river and making a little exploration, spots of good grazing can
be found on the north side of the Gila. Lastly, there is in the season
an abundant supply of excellent food for animals in the mezquit beans
which are found on our road along the Gila, from Tezotal to Fort Yuma.
These beans fall from the tree as soon as ripe; animals will leave
their corn to eat them, as I have proved.
The Indians make a kind of flour from these beans by roasting and then
pounding them; they contain a large portion of saccharine matter, so
much so that the Pimos manufacture from them a species of syrup. They
commence falling in August; we found a great many under the trees in
November, after the emigration had passed down the river.
On my return trip from San Diego I brought my mules into our Maricopa
station in a much better condition than when I left Fort Yuma with
them. My practice was this: while one of my two teams of mules was
working in the coaches for a couple of hours at a walk, I would have
the other team under charge of an experienced man, either ahead or
behind the coaches, eating their fill of grass, beans, or whatever they
could find. At the end of two hours we would change teams, giving the
other set of mules their chance for loitering behind to eat.
Sometimes emigrants who are going to California pasture their cattle
on the bottom lands of the Colorado river for a few weeks before
attempting to cross the desert; others again put on at once, in order
to reach as soon as possible the excellent grazing on the coast range.
We keep a mulada at Fort Yuma for our changes, which we send out every
day to feed in the river bottom, under charge of a Mexican herder,
bringing them in at night for safety.
In crossing the Colorado desert of ninety-five miles from Fort Yuma
to Carissa there is but little for animals to eat. In some few places
arroyos make up to the northward, containing mezquit trees full of
beans, but these are limited in number, while they are not situated at
the watering places.
In the mountains near Carissa, or at Vallecito, good grazing commences
again. I am assured by men familiar with this section of country that
good hay can be cut on the mountain sides, a few miles south of the
present desert, and hauled on to the line of our road at a fair price.
Mezquit beans can also be procured sufficiently near the road to be
sold to travellers at reasonable rates. One advantage of our road is,
that any emigrant who may be _en route_ to California can now leave his
stock in Arizona to recruit, while he takes passage for San Diego or
along the road to explore for himself the country over which he intends
to pass.
The country we stage over is a grazing and mineral country, rather
than an agricultural one, though I found no lack of grain along the
road. In seasons of rain an abundance of grain is raised all the way
from San Antonio to Fort Clarke; from there to Birchville there are
no settlements, and the grain has to be hauled from either end to the
military posts between these two points; along the Rio Grande the whole
country is capable of cultivation. Wheat, corn, beans, pumpkins, and
onions of very superior flavor are all raised in great abundance by the
Spanish population.
Flour of an excellent quality is made at a mill on the Rio Grande, a
couple of miles above El Paso; it is owned and managed by Simeon Hart,
esq., who is the contractor for supplying with flour all the forts in
that section of the country.
In many places along the Rio Grande our road lies through cornfields
miles in length. At Tucson we found no difficulty in purchasing corn
and barley for our mules; flour from wheat grown in the Santa Cruz
valley, and ground at Tucson by the Mexicans; also beans and onions.
At Maricopa station we bought, of the Indians, flour, beans, peas,
green and dried pumpkins, chickens, eggs, corn, and wheat. At Fort Yuma
every thing has to be imported. There is a considerable importation
there of flour, pinola, pounded parched corn, jerked beef, and sugar,
called pinoche, all of which comes on pack animals from Sonora; no
doubt a large trade will spring up from this when Colorado City becomes
of consequence. Nearly everything is now brought from San Francisco by
way of the Gulf of California and steamer up the Colorado river.
Arizona ought to be supplied through Guyamas, a Mexican port on the
Gulf of California.
Ours is emphatically a stage road. If it were a rich agricultural
country all the way from San Antonio to San Diego, it would be
impossible for a stage line to cross it in schedule time until some
remote day, when the whole distance shall have been settled, and towns
built at convenient distances, with good roads connecting them. Our
present road would be called a superior one in any State for thirteen
hundred miles of its length, and a fair road the remainder of the
distance, save twenty-two miles of sand in the Colorado desert, from
Cook’s Wells to Alamo Mucho.
In the valley of the Rio Grande I had an application from an old
mountain man, who wanted a situation as guide. This man had trapped
beaver in all the principal streams falling into the Gila and Colorado
rivers. He said the trappers pronounced our present route across
Arizona a good one at all seasons of the year.
I had a good opportunity of knowing the nature of the climate we have
to contend with. Leaving San Antonio in August, and going directly
through, I passed over the road in the hottest months of the year.
Then, leaving San Diego October 23, and spending nearly three months
returning, I experienced the winter weather over the same country. It
was very warm in San Antonio in July; but when we had once commenced
ascending to the table lands of Texas, the heat became comparatively
moderated, with nights particularly pleasant. In going down the Gila,
where we were descending toward the level of the sea, the heat was
very great, so much so that, for comfort, and having a full moon, we
travelled by night and lay by during the middle of the day. In my
experience of the heat on the Gila, which looks so formidable, as
marked by the thermometer, I suffered much less with that instrument
indicating a hundred and over than I have suffered in the Atlantic
States with the thermometer at 85 or 90. The air was pure and clear,
the heat produced a copious perspiration, and gave no feeling of
oppression in breathing.
In my plans for returning across the continent, the recollection
of the hot days along the Gila, or on the Colorado desert, never
present themselves to me as any serious inconvenience. The heat does
not oppress animals any more than it does men. Our mail carriers,
who regularly cross the desert, frequently complain of the blinding
influence of the sun reflected in their eyes from the bright sands; I
never heard any of them complain of unpleasant effects from the heat,
and we have a number of men employed who have traversed this desert
for several years past. In returning to San Antonio, through Arizona
and Texas, I experienced the northers a number of times, having been
delayed once by snow; but none of our party ever suffered anything
more than the natural annoyances incidental to wet feet and damp
blankets. I make here some few extracts from my journal about the cold
I experienced on our route:
_December 5._--At El Paso have had a week of cold weather, with an
occasional strong north wind during the time. Ice formed in a pond 100
feet across in the rear of the house; ice also made in the acequias,
but the river was barely skimmed over once very early in the morning.
Only once in a great many years, in El Paso, has the ice been thick
enough to put up a few tons in an ice house.
_December 9._--The mail coach came into El Paso from Tucson, and the
conductor reported a norther, accompanied by snow, in the Mimbres. It
fell on them the same day we had a norther at El Paso, the 5th, as
above; the snow melted as it fell, so that by making a longer morning
drive than common he reached the shelter of the trees at the Mimbres;
none of his mules were chilled by being exposed without blankets, after
unharnessing. The same conductor reports a snow squall on the previous
trip, without any detention in either case to the mail, and without the
snow lying on the ground at all; it melted as it fell both times.
A letter per this mail from our train going west reports the weather
cold enough in the night to freeze water in the canteens, but no one
suffering from cold by sleeping on the ground. During the day it was
bright and warm, forming a pleasant contrast to the night.
At El Paso, December 9, we received advices of the northern wagon
road expedition having returned for the winter. I consulted Colonel
Leach, superintendent of the El Paso and Fort Yuma wagon road as to
his movements; he assured me he had no intention of going into winter
quarters, but, on the contrary, should continue on the road through
the winter months; in fact, he deemed them the best suited to his
purposes of shortening and improving the road.
The surgeon of Fort Lancaster, who keeps a meteorological journal, said
they had not as much snow in that part of Texas during the whole of the
past six years taken together as had fallen during the present winter.
The snow which fell on the 3d had so far disappeared from the ground as
to allow the animals to graze sufficiently, but I waited in order to
accompany a detachment of mounted infantry going on a scout as far as
Fort Hudson.
_January 6._--The snow had entirely disappeared.
_January 7._--We camped to-night on the Llano Estacado, about half way
across it; there was not a particle of snow on the ground. We found one
advantage from the snow, it had melted and run into a natural stone
tank, giving us abundance of water for ourselves and stock; it will
last some weeks. An expense of a few hundred dollars in building up the
sides of the tank would make it capable of holding several millions of
gallons of water.
The Llano Estacado is here very narrow; we cross the extreme southern
portion of it immediately south of us. Not a mile distant, I saw the
cañons and broken gulches running eastward to the Devil’s river, and
westward to the Pecos.
I never had a case of sickness among either men or passengers during
my whole trip, excepting a little annoyance from an over indulgence
in fruit in the valley of the Rio Grande. The salubrious air must be
conducive to health. Such is the purity and clearness of the atmosphere
that the stars shine at night with a brilliancy unknown in this section
of the country; cloudy days or nights are an exception, and the stars
at night actually give light enough to enable us on our night drives,
of which we have a considerable number, to find the road. It can be
seen, for some distance ahead of the mules, very plainly.
_Climatic boundary on the west._
_October 24._--The coast range of mountains, which approaches the sea
in San Diego county, is the climatic boundary between California and
Arizona. Our stock is kept at Lassator’s, 48 miles, nearly due west,
from San Diego, in a beautiful valley among the mountains; in San Diego
they have a charming climate the year round, while among the mountains
snow falls occasionally during the winter, which in the valley below
turns to rain. The snow remains on the ground but a day or two. In
California there is no rain from March until October, but showers
occasionally fall in these valleys during the summer months, when it is
the rainy season in Sonora.
The exploring party I sent over the mountain on the 15th of September
were rained on all one night. We saw clouds to the westward, but not
one drop of rain fell upon us.
By reference to my journal it will be noticed that rain fell on us at
intervals all the way from the opening of the Rio Grande valley until
I came near to Fort Yuma. While the coast along the Pacific was, in
September and October, parched with a drought, compelling rancheros to
send their cattle into the mountains; our contractor was cutting hay to
send over to our station on the desert. Lassator’s is twelve miles from
the top of the coast range, which we there descend by a mule path for
several miles on our way to Vallecito, though a good road can be made
with a moderate amount of money. After crossing the desert, emigrants
usually give their stock a run of the excellent grazing valleys in
these mountains, before proceeding further on their journey.
It is hardly possible for me to do more than sketch a few of the
changes which our road has produced in the country through which we
pass.
The War Department uses the facilities offered by our line for a
regular semi-monthly correspondence with seven military posts.
Persons interested in mining pursuits are now looking with great
interest towards the silver and copper mines of Arizona. Our mail not
only carries the correspondence which takes the money to the mining
parties, but regularly bring reports of their success, while passengers
are, all the while, taking our line to Arizona; our stations afford
stopping places, and our agents information to all who prefer their own
mode of conveyance; such travellers are numerous.
The newly appointed consul for Guyamas takes our stage as far as
Tucson, starting from San Antonio, Texas.
Our line is already forming the basis of a new State, rich in minerals,
half way between Texas and California.
Very respectfully,
I. C. WOODS,
_Superintendent S. A. & S. D. Mail Line_.
Hon. A. V. BROWN,
_Postmaster General_.
Accompanying this please find the measurements from point to point
on the whole road from San Antonio to San Diego, with names of the
watering places.
_Table of distances, and from one watering-place to another from
starting point._