Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/524

 504 peditions that came up the Santa Cruz Valley in quest of the reputed treasure of the Aztecs in the fabled "land of Cibola," but retains no visible trace of age. If there were ever any monuments of importance, they have effectually vanished. Even the church is new. Such foreignness as there is consists of a very provincial Mexican squalor. The considerations of interest about it are of a purely utilitarian character, as: how it is to be paved, drained, lighted, provided with an adequate water supply, so as not to have to pay four cents a bucket for it, as at present; and how it is to get rid of its malarial fevers and shabby rookeries.

A writer in one of the papers one day paid a glowing eulogy to its peculiar situation, in the desert. He held that this was a matter not only of those material products which I have mentioned, but also of the highest moral and intellectual advantages. It was apropos of the establishment of a public library. No great idea has ever been evolved in the usual scenes of human habitation (so the argument ran), and there is no place for true study and contemplation like the desert. Christ, Mahomet, Zoroaster, and Confucius all formulated their creeds in the desert. I gather that we are to expect from Arizona, at the proper time, some new prophet or sage, to sway again the destinies of men in their way.

The correspondent was satisfied, at any rate, that, with a public library, Tucson could shortly become another Alexandria of the desert, "a seat of learning and fountain-head of ideas, to be sought by students from Mexico, from the Pacific Islands, from China and Japan, and the mountains and valleys of the Rio Grande," and I for one shall be very glad to see it so.

It is the commercial centre of the important Southern