Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/491

 pressing than such a country, but as a matter-of-fact it is a stimulus to the curiosity, and furnishes real entertainment. One would not wish to be abandoned there without resources, it is true, but he does not tire of looking at it from the car-window. Its blazing dryness is disinfectant and preservative. There can never exist the last extreme of sadness where the element of decay by damp and mould is not present. Chemical processes are those which are principally going on. Wonders of almost any sort may be expected, and you almost look for phantoms not of earth among the shifting mirages.

A considerable part of Arizona, as well, is of the same character, but it is estimated by competent authority that with irrigation thirty-seven per cent, of that Territory can be redeemed for agriculture, and sixty per cent, as pasturage. It will be called to mind that even the apparently hopeless Colorado Desert, which is below the level of the sea, is also below the level of the Colorado River, from which water might perhaps be spread over it with comparative ease. The truly patriotic Arizonian in their neighborhood is not ashamed of his encompassing deserts, but rather proud of them, and with a certain reason. The desert is in reality a laboratory of useful products. Paper is made from the yucca, or Spanish-bayonet, which abounds in parts of it. There are tracts of salt, borax, gypsum, sulphur, asbestos, and kaolin, and quarries of pumice-stone, only waiting shipment. It is maintained, also, that it has deposits of the same precious metals which, mined in places where water is more accessible, have given the Territory most of its present fame.

Our train runs out upon a long wooden drawbridge, across the Colorado River, and we arrive at Yuma. The company has placed here the first of its series of hotels