PETRIFIED GIANTS, THIRD FOREST, ARIZONA
Arizona is the Land of Magic and of Mystery. It is the land of the yet undreamed-of future, and it is also the region of brooding mystery, of strange surprise. Besides its stupendous Grand Cañon, here are the cañons of Chiquito, Marble, Desolation, and Limestone; the Montezuma Well, Castle Dome, the Four Peaks—rising to the height of several thousand feet, for hundreds of miles; the Thumb Buttes, San Francisco Peak, the Tonto Basin, and the Twin Lake—all of these phenomenal marvels of scenery telling their tale of the action of water and of fire thousands of ages ago; convulsions of nature which have rent the mountains asunder, opened chasms thousands of feet deep in the earth, and projected the bottom of a sea into the air as a mountain peak,—
"What time the gods kept carnival."
The gods have, indeed, kept high carnival in Arizona. Every aspect of nature is on a scale of Titanic magnificence. The cañon systems of its mountain ranges; the indescribable grandeur which reaches its supreme majesty in the Grand Cañon; the wonders of extinct volcanic action; the colossal channels cut by rushing waters; the unearthly splendor of the atmospheric effects, and the coloring of the skies,—all combine to render Arizona an expression of magical wonder. All manner of phenomenal conditions are encountered. The land is a red sandy desert, whose leading productions are loose stones (lying so thickly in the sand as to make walking or driving all but impossible) and pine trees, petrified forests, and cacti. The riotous growth of the cactus is, indeed, a terror to the unwary. But it is in sunsets and enchantment of views and richness of mines, and in marvellous curiosities—as the Petrified Forest, Meteorite Mountain, and the Grand Cañon—that Arizona distinguishes herself. She cannot irrigate her soil because there is no available water. But the pine forests—some of them—produce lumber; the mines are rich, and the features of nature unequalled in the entire world; while the exhilaration of the electric air and the wonderful beauty of coloring quite make up to Arizona resources that are unsurpassed if not unrivalled.
Arizona is not an agricultural country by nature, nor hardly by grace. The resources are mining and timber. Still there are probably some twenty million acres capable of rich productiveness, on which wheat, barley, corn, vegetables of all kinds, and also rice and cotton, could be successfully cultivated if irrigation could be sufficiently effected. The largest area of agricultural land lies in the regions adjacent to Prescott and Phœnix. 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 Phœnix, 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 Phœnix), which is the largest artificial lake in the world. This reservoir will store one and a half million acres-feet of water, drawing it from the mountain cañons miles away. Not only does this project mean an abundant water supply for a region heretofore useless, but rich returns as well.
There are few regions which so attract and reward the researches of the scientist as does Arizona. The geologist, the mineralogist, the ethnologist, the archæologist, finds here the most amazing field for apparently unending investigation and study. Nor is the botanist excluded. The flora of Arizona offers the same strange and unique developments that characterize the region in so many other directions. The cacti flourish in riotous growth. The saguaro, a giant species, frequently attains a height of forty feet. A strange spectacle it is, with its pale green body, fluted like a Corinthian column, and its colossal arms outstretched, covered with immense prickly thorns and bearing purple blossoms. The century plant flourishes in Arizona. There is a curious scarlet flower, blooming in clusters, at the top of straight pole-like stumps ten to fifteen feet in height, which terminate in luxuriant masses of scarlet blossoms and green leaves, and grow in groups of from a dozen to fifty together, producing the most fascinating color effects in the landscape. This plant is called the ocotilla. There are plants which produce a fibrous textile leaf which the native Mexicans used as paper; there are others whose roots are used as a substitute for soap. The trees are largely pine, cedar, and juniper, though in many parts of the state the rolling foothills bear forests of oak, and the sycamore, ash, elder, walnut, and the swift-growing cottonwood are found along the watercourses.
COLLECTION OF CACTI MADE BY OFFICERS AT FORT McDOWELL, ARIZONA, FOR THIS PICTURE