Chapter I: C. Wood, Superintendent (3)

Wood, water, and grass, are the emigrant’s necessities in crossing our continent. Over our route we have enough of these for all purposes of staging or emigration. Through the country over which we pass, though there is enough water for emigration and staging, yet there is but one river not usually fordable; I refer to the Colorado of the West. This is a great deal in its favor as a stage road. If it were a heavy timbered country, it would not be likely to be so well grassed, as it would be sure to have large rivers troublesome to cross, and need an immense labor cutting down timber to open a road. As to grass, it is wonderfully provided all the way to our Maricopa station. Wood is generally scarce on our route. From San Antonio to San Felipe creek, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, there is an abundance of wooded country; post oaks and mezquit flats are quite numerous. Along Devil’s river, for a distance of twenty miles, there is plenty of wood.

At Forts Lancaster and Davis, oak wood is hauled from a distance of seven miles to supply the military posts. Along the Rio Grande universally the fuel is the root of the mezquit tree, a sort of underground forest; it burns with as hot a fire as hickory wood, and makes superior charcoal. Cotton-wood is used along the Rio Grande valley, being the fuel used in some places. We found wood scarce all the way from the Rio Grande to the Maricopas; from thence to Fort Yuma along the Gila abundant; then it is scarce over the desert; at the watering places, however, enough can be found in spots not remote from the wells; once among the San Diego mountains there is wood enough. Over these portions of our road where we find no wood at the springs or watering holes, and for want of time cannot wander off among the mountain gulches to look for it, we secure enough for all purposes of cooking from the great abundance of roots generally found just cropping out of the ground; these make an excellent fire.

An examination of my table of distances will show no want of water along the route; all my measurements are to and from well known watering places. From San Antonio our road is extremely well watered until we reach the head of the San Pedro or Devil’s river, a distance of 218 miles; going west thence, we have a jornada of forty-four miles; thence another of thirty miles, between permanent roads, on to the Pecos. In the rainy season there are plenty of places in this distance where the water stands in natural tanks in the rocks, or in cañons. This stretch of forty-four miles is the longest we have on the road between permanent water stations; it forms however no great obstacle to staging. We haul water for ourselves in kegs, and the mules, having to go about twelve to sixteen hours without it, do not suffer in consequence. We have no scarcity of water in Arizona for our present purposes.--(See schedule of distances.) Our watering places on the desert west of Fort Yuma are by no means far apart, but the supply is limited at all times. It will be a matter of absolute necessity to enlarge them before the overland emigration of this spring reaches the desert. The improvement of those now used, as well as the digging of others, will be very easily accomplished.

I am of opinion that the chances of procuring water by boring artesian wells on the elevated table lands, over which our road runs, may be considered as very limited. At any rate, as a practical mode of procuring water for us, it will not do. Supposing Captain Pope should demonstrate the feasibility of boring these artesian wells, even then private individuals cannot afford to make them, neither can they wait for government to do so. We should be compelled, in staging across the continent at a rate of speed necessitating the erection of stations, to adopt the old Mexican method of building tanks wherever the natural formation of the country admits of it which it does in numerous places along our road.

As for grass, the country through which our road runs is unequalled as a grazing country, in the opinion of practiced men acquainted with the subject. I have heard farmers pronounce the gramma and mezquit grass nearly equal to clover. There is a peculiarity of the grass of this section which adapts it most admirably to our purpose; when appearing dried up and dead, it contains life and nutriment; an examination will show this on plucking it. When the rains come, instead of our having to wait wholly for new grass to spring up, we find the old dried grass renewing its life, becoming green again, until in a few days the country is covered with an excellent crop of grass, as good as if it had been growing many weeks.

Many of the finest ranches or grazing farms in the State of Sonora were once located in what is now called Arizona; the buildings are at present deserted; the inhabitants have fled from the Apaches, who stole their cattle, as far as possible destroyed the buildings, and murdered or carried into captivity the inhabitants.

The section of the country along the Gila river is commonly pronounced by emigrants the worst portion of the whole southern road across our continent; but even along this river, though it is not superabundantly supplied with grazing lands, no one need let their animals suffer for the want of food. Travellers must take some care in examining to the right and left of the road. To those who have just been passing over the finest grazing lands in the world, where a range of a few hundred yards would suffice for their teams anywhere along the road, the Gila naturally seems a desert. As a fair illustration of the grazing in Arizona, I would state that an overheated horse or mule will actually founder on the rich gramma grass as he would on clover. On nearly all the hills found along the Gila river spots of gramma and quinta or bunch grass are scattered in places. Young willows also grow along the river banks, which are good food for animals. A weed much liked by them and very nutritious is found in many places along the bottoms. Mules are also fond of the fallen leaves of the mezquit tree. By crossing the river and making a little exploration, spots of good grazing can be found on the north side of the Gila. Lastly, there is in the season an abundant supply of excellent food for animals in the mezquit beans which are found on our road along the Gila, from Tezotal to Fort Yuma. These beans fall from the tree as soon as ripe; animals will leave their corn to eat them, as I have proved.

The Indians make a kind of flour from these beans by roasting and then pounding them; they contain a large portion of saccharine matter, so much so that the Pimos manufacture from them a species of syrup. They commence falling in August; we found a great many under the trees in November, after the emigration had passed down the river.

On my return trip from San Diego I brought my mules into our Maricopa station in a much better condition than when I left Fort Yuma with them. My practice was this: while one of my two teams of mules was working in the coaches for a couple of hours at a walk, I would have the other team under charge of an experienced man, either ahead or behind the coaches, eating their fill of grass, beans, or whatever they could find. At the end of two hours we would change teams, giving the other set of mules their chance for loitering behind to eat.

Sometimes emigrants who are going to California pasture their cattle on the bottom lands of the Colorado river for a few weeks before attempting to cross the desert; others again put on at once, in order to reach as soon as possible the excellent grazing on the coast range. We keep a mulada at Fort Yuma for our changes, which we send out every day to feed in the river bottom, under charge of a Mexican herder, bringing them in at night for safety.

In crossing the Colorado desert of ninety-five miles from Fort Yuma to Carissa there is but little for animals to eat. In some few places arroyos make up to the northward, containing mezquit trees full of beans, but these are limited in number, while they are not situated at the watering places.

In the mountains near Carissa, or at Vallecito, good grazing commences again. I am assured by men familiar with this section of country that good hay can be cut on the mountain sides, a few miles south of the present desert, and hauled on to the line of our road at a fair price. Mezquit beans can also be procured sufficiently near the road to be sold to travellers at reasonable rates. One advantage of our road is, that any emigrant who may be _en route_ to California can now leave his stock in Arizona to recruit, while he takes passage for San Diego or along the road to explore for himself the country over which he intends to pass.

The country we stage over is a grazing and mineral country, rather than an agricultural one, though I found no lack of grain along the road. In seasons of rain an abundance of grain is raised all the way from San Antonio to Fort Clarke; from there to Birchville there are no settlements, and the grain has to be hauled from either end to the military posts between these two points; along the Rio Grande the whole country is capable of cultivation. Wheat, corn, beans, pumpkins, and onions of very superior flavor are all raised in great abundance by the Spanish population.

Flour of an excellent quality is made at a mill on the Rio Grande, a couple of miles above El Paso; it is owned and managed by Simeon Hart, esq., who is the contractor for supplying with flour all the forts in that section of the country.

In many places along the Rio Grande our road lies through cornfields miles in length. At Tucson we found no difficulty in purchasing corn and barley for our mules; flour from wheat grown in the Santa Cruz valley, and ground at Tucson by the Mexicans; also beans and onions.

At Maricopa station we bought, of the Indians, flour, beans, peas, green and dried pumpkins, chickens, eggs, corn, and wheat. At Fort Yuma every thing has to be imported. There is a considerable importation there of flour, pinola, pounded parched corn, jerked beef, and sugar, called pinoche, all of which comes on pack animals from Sonora; no doubt a large trade will spring up from this when Colorado City becomes of consequence. Nearly everything is now brought from San Francisco by way of the Gulf of California and steamer up the Colorado river.

Arizona ought to be supplied through Guyamas, a Mexican port on the Gulf of California.

Ours is emphatically a stage road. If it were a rich agricultural country all the way from San Antonio to San Diego, it would be impossible for a stage line to cross it in schedule time until some remote day, when the whole distance shall have been settled, and towns built at convenient distances, with good roads connecting them. Our present road would be called a superior one in any State for thirteen hundred miles of its length, and a fair road the remainder of the distance, save twenty-two miles of sand in the Colorado desert, from Cook’s Wells to Alamo Mucho.

In the valley of the Rio Grande I had an application from an old mountain man, who wanted a situation as guide. This man had trapped beaver in all the principal streams falling into the Gila and Colorado rivers. He said the trappers pronounced our present route across Arizona a good one at all seasons of the year.

I had a good opportunity of knowing the nature of the climate we have to contend with. Leaving San Antonio in August, and going directly through, I passed over the road in the hottest months of the year. Then, leaving San Diego October 23, and spending nearly three months returning, I experienced the winter weather over the same country. It was very warm in San Antonio in July; but when we had once commenced ascending to the table lands of Texas, the heat became comparatively moderated, with nights particularly pleasant. In going down the Gila, where we were descending toward the level of the sea, the heat was very great, so much so that, for comfort, and having a full moon, we travelled by night and lay by during the middle of the day. In my experience of the heat on the Gila, which looks so formidable, as marked by the thermometer, I suffered much less with that instrument indicating a hundred and over than I have suffered in the Atlantic States with the thermometer at 85 or 90. The air was pure and clear, the heat produced a copious perspiration, and gave no feeling of oppression in breathing.

In my plans for returning across the continent, the recollection of the hot days along the Gila, or on the Colorado desert, never present themselves to me as any serious inconvenience. The heat does not oppress animals any more than it does men. Our mail carriers, who regularly cross the desert, frequently complain of the blinding influence of the sun reflected in their eyes from the bright sands; I never heard any of them complain of unpleasant effects from the heat, and we have a number of men employed who have traversed this desert for several years past. In returning to San Antonio, through Arizona and Texas, I experienced the northers a number of times, having been delayed once by snow; but none of our party ever suffered anything more than the natural annoyances incidental to wet feet and damp blankets. I make here some few extracts from my journal about the cold I experienced on our route:

_December 5._--At El Paso have had a week of cold weather, with an occasional strong north wind during the time. Ice formed in a pond 100 feet across in the rear of the house; ice also made in the acequias, but the river was barely skimmed over once very early in the morning. Only once in a great many years, in El Paso, has the ice been thick enough to put up a few tons in an ice house.

_December 9._--The mail coach came into El Paso from Tucson, and the conductor reported a norther, accompanied by snow, in the Mimbres. It fell on them the same day we had a norther at El Paso, the 5th, as above; the snow melted as it fell, so that by making a longer morning drive than common he reached the shelter of the trees at the Mimbres; none of his mules were chilled by being exposed without blankets, after unharnessing. The same conductor reports a snow squall on the previous trip, without any detention in either case to the mail, and without the snow lying on the ground at all; it melted as it fell both times.

A letter per this mail from our train going west reports the weather cold enough in the night to freeze water in the canteens, but no one suffering from cold by sleeping on the ground. During the day it was bright and warm, forming a pleasant contrast to the night.

At El Paso, December 9, we received advices of the northern wagon road expedition having returned for the winter. I consulted Colonel Leach, superintendent of the El Paso and Fort Yuma wagon road as to his movements; he assured me he had no intention of going into winter quarters, but, on the contrary, should continue on the road through the winter months; in fact, he deemed them the best suited to his purposes of shortening and improving the road.

The surgeon of Fort Lancaster, who keeps a meteorological journal, said they had not as much snow in that part of Texas during the whole of the past six years taken together as had fallen during the present winter. The snow which fell on the 3d had so far disappeared from the ground as to allow the animals to graze sufficiently, but I waited in order to accompany a detachment of mounted infantry going on a scout as far as Fort Hudson.

_January 6._--The snow had entirely disappeared.

_January 7._--We camped to-night on the Llano Estacado, about half way across it; there was not a particle of snow on the ground. We found one advantage from the snow, it had melted and run into a natural stone tank, giving us abundance of water for ourselves and stock; it will last some weeks. An expense of a few hundred dollars in building up the sides of the tank would make it capable of holding several millions of gallons of water.

The Llano Estacado is here very narrow; we cross the extreme southern portion of it immediately south of us. Not a mile distant, I saw the cañons and broken gulches running eastward to the Devil’s river, and westward to the Pecos.

I never had a case of sickness among either men or passengers during my whole trip, excepting a little annoyance from an over indulgence in fruit in the valley of the Rio Grande. The salubrious air must be conducive to health. Such is the purity and clearness of the atmosphere that the stars shine at night with a brilliancy unknown in this section of the country; cloudy days or nights are an exception, and the stars at night actually give light enough to enable us on our night drives, of which we have a considerable number, to find the road. It can be seen, for some distance ahead of the mules, very plainly.

_Climatic boundary on the west._

_October 24._--The coast range of mountains, which approaches the sea in San Diego county, is the climatic boundary between California and Arizona. Our stock is kept at Lassator’s, 48 miles, nearly due west, from San Diego, in a beautiful valley among the mountains; in San Diego they have a charming climate the year round, while among the mountains snow falls occasionally during the winter, which in the valley below turns to rain. The snow remains on the ground but a day or two. In California there is no rain from March until October, but showers occasionally fall in these valleys during the summer months, when it is the rainy season in Sonora.

The exploring party I sent over the mountain on the 15th of September were rained on all one night. We saw clouds to the westward, but not one drop of rain fell upon us.

By reference to my journal it will be noticed that rain fell on us at intervals all the way from the opening of the Rio Grande valley until I came near to Fort Yuma. While the coast along the Pacific was, in September and October, parched with a drought, compelling rancheros to send their cattle into the mountains; our contractor was cutting hay to send over to our station on the desert. Lassator’s is twelve miles from the top of the coast range, which we there descend by a mule path for several miles on our way to Vallecito, though a good road can be made with a moderate amount of money. After crossing the desert, emigrants usually give their stock a run of the excellent grazing valleys in these mountains, before proceeding further on their journey.

It is hardly possible for me to do more than sketch a few of the changes which our road has produced in the country through which we pass.

The War Department uses the facilities offered by our line for a regular semi-monthly correspondence with seven military posts.

Persons interested in mining pursuits are now looking with great interest towards the silver and copper mines of Arizona. Our mail not only carries the correspondence which takes the money to the mining parties, but regularly bring reports of their success, while passengers are, all the while, taking our line to Arizona; our stations afford stopping places, and our agents information to all who prefer their own mode of conveyance; such travellers are numerous.

The newly appointed consul for Guyamas takes our stage as far as Tucson, starting from San Antonio, Texas.

Our line is already forming the basis of a new State, rich in minerals, half way between Texas and California.

Very respectfully,