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 Phœnix and other Southern Arizona towns. It is a distance of some three hundred miles from Ash Fork to Winhelman, and Prescott and Phœnix are one hundred miles apart, Prescott being only a hundred miles from Ash Fork and Phœnix 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.
LOOKING THROUGH A PART OF THE RIVER GORGE, FOOT OF BAD TRAIL, GRAND CAÑON
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.
"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.
Phœnix, 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 Phœnix 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. Phœnix 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 Phœnix 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.