To a certain extent, some of the pictured rocks tell us of part of the daily life of this ancient race, for in a number of instances the pictures picked into the rocks, although rudely formed, are self-explanatory, and the ancient artist tells plainly by his work what is meant. On the edge of a little valley in the Superstition Mountains, there was found a great rock on which had been etched many small animals, apparently representing sheep, and at one side was the figure of a man, as if watching them. It may be the ancient herder himself, sitting in the shadow of the great rock, while his sheep were grazing in the valley below, has passed away the time in making this rock picture. The hardy wild sheep still found in the mountains of Arizona may be the remnants of great bands formerly domesticated by these people.
The skeleton of the prehistoric man dug from beneath the stalagmites in the cave of Mentone, France, and which set all the scientific men of the world talking and thinking, gives proof of no greater age than many of the skeletons, relics or bones of some of these ancient mound and canal builders.
An incident illustrating the great antiquity of prehistoric man in Arizona, is the following: In digging a well on the desert north of Phoenix, at the depth of 115 feet from the surface a stone mortar, such as the ancients used, was found standing upright, and in it was found a stone pestle, showing the mortar had not been carried there by any underground current of water, and that it had not been disturbed from the position in which its ancient owner had left it with the pestle in it. There is only one way to account for this mortar and pestle. They had originally been left on what was at that time the surface of the ground, and the slow wash from the mountains had gradually, during unknown ages, raised the surface for miles on every side to the extent of 115 feet.
The question is often asked, Will this hieroglyphic writing ever be deciphered? The authors of the most ancient hieroglyphic writings or markings seem to have had well-defined forms or marks, which were in common use for this class of writing. Is it not most reasonable that a race so far advanced in other ways would have perfected a method of transmitting by marks of some kind their records to those who might come after them? Again, where so much system is shown in the use of symbols, it may be presumed that the same mark, wherever used in the same position, carries with it a fixed meaning, alike at all times. Having such a settled system of marks, there must be a key to the thoughts concealed in writing, and quite likely the key for deciphering these hieroglyphics will sometime be found on one of the yet undiscovered hieroglyphic rocks in the high mountains or in the mounds not yet examined. On the other hand, there can be no key to the inferior class of pictographs made by the people who came after the mound, canal and city builders had disappeared, for the crudely marked forms of reptiles, animals or similar things had a meaning, if any, varying with each individual maker.
Who were these people who formed a great nation here in the obscurity of the remote past? Were they the ancient Phoenicians, who were not only a maritime but a colonizing nation, and who, in their well-manned ships, might have found their way to the southern coast of America ages since, and from thence journeyed north? Or were they some of the followers of Votan or Zamna, who had wandered north and founded a colony of the Aztecs? Whoever these people were, and whichever way they came from, the evidences of the great works they left behind them give ample proof that they were superior and different from other races around them, and these particular people may have been the "bearded white men," whom the Indians had traditions of when Coronado's followers first came through the Gila and Salt River valleys in 1526.
[CHAPTER XIX.]
OUR GREAT WATERWAYS
Importance of Rivers to Commerce a Generation Ago--The Ideal River Man--The Great Mississippi River and Its Importance to Our Native Land--The Treacherous Missouri--A First Mate Who Found a Cook's Disguise Very Convenient--How a Second Mate Got Over the Inconvenience of Temporary Financial Embarrassment.
During the last quarter of the century in which we write the figures "1" and "8" in every date line, the steam railroad has, to a very large extent, put out of joint the nose of the steamboat, just as, at the present time, we are threatened with so complete a revolution in travel and motive power as to warrant a prediction that, long before another quarter of a century has passed, electricity will take the place of steam almost entirely. But even if this is so, old acquaintance should not be forgot, and every citizen of the United States should feel that the prosperity of the country is due, in very large measure, to the country's magnificent waterways, and to the enterprise of the men who equipped river fleets and operated them, with varying degrees of profit.
The true river man is not so conspicuous as he was in the days when St. Louis, Cincinnati, Memphis and other important railroad centers of to-day were exclusively river towns. The river man was a king in those days. The captain walked the streets with as much dignity as he walked his own deck, and he was pointed to by landsmen as a person of dignity and repute. The mate was a great man in the estimation of all who knew him, and of a good many who did not know him. Ruling his crew with a rod of iron, and accustomed to be obeyed with considerable and commendable promptness, he adopted a tone of voice in general conversation considerably louder than the average, and every one acquired a habit of making way for him.