THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO, ALBUQUERQUE. GIRLS' DORMITORY the lands offered to the settler. Now, however, they are being broken up and sold either to land companies or to individuals. This adds materially to the area of farming land in the new State, and removes one hindrance to rapid settlement. In Arizona the grants, with one or two small exceptions, are all within thirty miles of the southern border, and their area is small. The hope of the new States is agriculture; land speculation by syndicates is detrimental to their progress. Mining in Arizona bears to agriculture a ratio of seven to one; it is a matter of a few years when agriculture will do what it has done in Colorado-outstrip the mines. But it is not to be accomplished with out forethought and intelligent management. For instance, the forthcoming report of the Territorial Auditor of New Mexico will show that the total valuation of taxable property, which is $58,313,126, on a basis of about one-fifth real value, has decreased $1,151,000 in the past year. The Auditor wrote to the county officers to know the reason. The replies were interesting. "Many farmers came to try dry farming, and the drought caused them to leave," says one. "The revaluation of irrigation properties that did not prove as valuable as expected caused a decrease." "Sheep and cattle have fallen off because stock has moved to other grazing grounds on account of short pas ture," say others. These changing conditions do not lessen the opportunity of the new lands, but emphasize the importance of intelligent settlement and of plans fitted to the new conditions. The man who has farmed in Wisconsin sometimes learns through expensive experiment that he must use different methods. A few, discouraged, return, or go on to the coast States. When, as in New Mexico, 10,900 homestead entries are reported by the latest statistical report in a single year, covering more than a million and a half acres, there are certain to be some disappointments. It tells but part of what our new States consist to say that New Mexico has eighty-one banks with $18,000,000 deposits; Arizona, fifty banks with $17,000,000 deposits; that Phoenix gained thirty-five per cent in valuation last year, and with 20,000 population has property assessed at $9,000,000; that Albuquerque, with 25,000, is extending its city limits to accommodate incoming residents; that towns like Prescott, Santa Fé, Globe, Bisbee, are showing the touch of progress in everything that goes to make modern municipalities; that the permanent school funds are among the most liberal of any part of the Nation; that churches are abundant and their pastors abreast with the times. Associated with these evidences of worth as a promise of the future is the character of the people. That they are planning for the higher life is apparent. "These new States are actually top-heavy with institutions of higher learning," one Territorial officer put it. "By that I mean that we have provided so liberally for universities, normal schools, and similar institutions that we have greater facilities than there are students to utilize them. Teachers' salaries are high." The University of New Mexico, at Albuquerque (its buildings quaintly typical of the Southwest, fashioned after Indian pueblos), enrolls 130; the University of Arizona, at Tucson, has 201. They are liberally proportioned for the larger attendance that will come with the growth of the States. School lands in each State are counted by millions of acres. Not quite complete was the solemn remark of the Census supervisor of New Mexico when he said: "We have the largest proportion of our people owning their own homes free of debt of any State in the Union." "Is this from statistics, or is it real estate boom literature?" was queried. "Fact." Then, with a smile: "Why not, when all necessary to make a house is to go out in the back yard and dig some earth for an adobe wall?" Yet even a "doby " dwelling is an abiding-place, and its possession in fee simple undoubtedly adds to the contentment and permanence of the population. Nor is such a home to be despised, when made with skill. Many of the best families dwell within such walls. Cool in summer, warm in winter, decorated with the inevitable Navajo rugs and blankets, they become unexpectedly attractive. "We are going to add two rooms to our house this fall," said a settler's wife. "The contract calls for large ones, and they will cost $50 each." Most of us would like to enlarge our dwellings on that basis. Every town of size has its woman's clubs. Carnegie libraries are here as elsewhere. The preservation of the traditions and reminders of the strange races that lived here hundreds or thousands of years ago occupies the attention of the studious. The Archæological Institute of America keeps a force of student workers under skilled man agement unearthing the villages and homes of prehistoric people, its headquarters being at Santa Fé. Some recent excavations show marvelous ingenuity and workmanship in the construction of those queer community dwellings, built with earth walls several stories high, and occupied for every purpose, from the ruling of kings to the plotting of subjects. Just now especial pride is taken in a perfect type unearthed at Puye, the first of the ancient pueblos of the Rio Grande Valley to be excavated systematically, and the second ruin in the United States to be preserved as a National monument. in prehistoric history is all the Southwest, material for many generations of students. So much comes down from the pastwater runs to-day through irrigation ditches built in the time of Montezuma. Rich Nor is a fine sentiment lacking. At Prescott is being completed by Arizona a Pioneers' Home, a stately edifice set high on a beautiful site, to be the resting-place for those who were in at the beginning of things. Having lived in the Territory twenty-five years and reaching the age of sixty, the needy and deserving may there find comfortable retreat for their later days. It is a commendable tribute of appreciation. Then there is always the health-seeker. "The world has been educated to think the climate of the Southwest an infallible cure for weak lungs," said a county supervisor. "As a result sufferers are sent here by the hundreds, often when it is too late. They come with money and without-but always with hope. We do all we can for them, but it is puzzling to know what is best. They cannot be sent home, and it becomes a burden to care for them as they deserve." Many tuberculosis camps under the management of church organizations or associations are established away from the towns. In the towns signs forbidding spitting on the walks are everywhere, and efforts are made to restrict the spread of disease. Many come intending to "rough it" on ranches - but they are just the persons that the ranchmen do not desire. One such went to a physician. "I can do nothing for you," was the advice. "But go out on the desert and see how long you can live without stepping under a roof." In six months a sturdy, sun-browned man reappeared and introduced himself with, "This is the first time I have been under a roof." That is what helps; sunshine and pure air will do the rest -if anything can. Some things are done in a way that the East could well pattern. For instance, Arizona is building a Territo THE OLDEST HOUSE IN THE UNITED STATES (1520) AT SANTA FÉ rial Highway, the most extensive piece of road-making in the trans-Mississippi country. The principal portion, on which work is now being done, is a one-hundred-mile section from Phoenix to Prescott through the Bradshaw Mountains, its highest point 7,000 feet. It is a beautiful roadway, twelve feet wide, surfaced with disintegrated granite, and will cost $4,000 a mile. Other stretches are valley roads, surfaced partly with granite, partly with gravel, and partly oiled, costing $900 a mile. Concrete bridges, one costing $55,000, are being built. When completed, the system will cost $1,250,000, and 1,043 miles of boulevard will connect the principal towns and cities reaching up to the titanic wonder of the Southwest, the Grand Cañon of Arizona. A ranchman in vites you to go thirty miles to see his property. "By stage or horseback?" you ask. "Oh, in a car, of course." Automobiles are nearly as common in the new States as in New York. The Territorial Highway and the Scenic Highway, just begun in New Mexico on much the same plan, will make an ideal course for the motorist. Always will there be interest for the visitor in the many strange sights of the new commonwealths. The Indian pueblos, the reservations, the petrified forests, the cañons, and the deserts have fascination. Old and new civilizations mingle. In remote parts you see ponies driven round and round, treading out the wheat as centuries ago. A few score miles away is a great concrete dam furnishing electricity and sending it miles over the barren plain to illuminate towns and drive street cars. This blending of the old and new is one great charm of the Southwest, nor will it pass away. Conditions are such as to retain the picturesque. To be sure there are hundreds of square miles for which no possible use can be imagined-an area that seems for no purpose except to separate places of civilization. Gray, solitary, aloof, like the cacti that are its sign, it bakes beneath the summer sun. You come to feel that it has overpowered the whole region. A few miles, and you drop into a valley where meadows of alfalfa, fruitful orchards, and fragrant gardens abound, a little Eden complete in its own resources and the desert is forgotten! AN ARIZONA SUBURB, WHERE ALL WAS MESQUITE EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO No such close settlement is possible as in the Middle West, where every quartersection may support a family; but over such area as can be profitably tilled will be produced, by intensive farming, crops that cannot be approached except where artificial moisture may be obtained. Land at $500 to $1,000 an acre seems at first unreasonably high; when production is considered, it is really cheaper than much of the acreage of the Middle States at one-tenth those sums. A clear-headed, energetic people is developing the new States, eager to make them, in Western parlance, "a good place to live in." That success will come is inevitable. The era of the "bad man " has passed-it is punishable by heavy fine to carry concealed weapons in either State. The era of the home-builder is at hand. Set amid twenty miles of brown-gray prairie was a tiny adobe dwelling, an adobewalled corral, and a bit of plowed ground. Thoughtfully, from the observation platform of the California Limited, a passenger watched it. "My father," he commented, "once started West by ox-team. In midIowa he became discouraged, squatted on a claim, farmed for three years, then sold out for two hundred dollars and went back East. To-day, part of the business section of Des Moines is built on that farm. It may be" The suggestion lent keener interest to that dull-brown group fast blending into the hazy distance. Into every beginning in the new States enters some vision of the future. In a halfcentury more, it may be- Who knows? THE OLD CELLAR PLACE BY FREDERIC E. SNOW A huge depression in the earth o'ergrown With grass and weeds, where rose and lilac sprout In wild disorder straggle all about, And in the midst a tumbled heap of stone Flicker a brief moment and then are gone! T HE great market-place, or Sok, of Tangier is spread out on the hillside above the Fasci Gate. There are many beautiful outlooks from about the city, but the view from the Sok-the moss-covered walls of the ancient citadel, the broad bay, the distant Pillars of Hercules, the gold and green hills of Spain across the Straits is the best of all. Thursday is the day set for the market. But all things in Mussuldom begin the day before. By noon Wednesday the Sok is in a turmoil. The trails leading in from the country are crowded with peasants, their mules and womenfolk laden with the produce of their fields. Old Father Time becomes young again. Within sight of the modern battle-ships of Gibraltar you find soft-footed camels laden with dates, black Nubian slaves running about with pigskins filled with water, asses half hidden beneath immense crates of cackling chickens, bare-legged hill women plodding along under appalling loads of brushwood. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are there with their original flocks and herds. There is much buying and selling Wednesday evening. All night long there is movement. Newcomers from the distant hills find squatters in their hereditary booths. The ensuing wrangle makes sleep impossible. As any one's business is every one's affair, the argument is volu minous and acrimonious. Then suddenly -in a way utterly beyond the comprehension of a mere infidel-the matter is arranged. "Silence like a poultice comes to heal the wounds of sound." The Sok falls asleep till the next eruption-caused by a new arrival or the stampede of a delirious jackass. I happened to be walking through the Sok one night when a disturbance occurred which has become almost historic. It was caused by the foxhounds of the English Embassy. Some careless person left the kennels unlocked. Wandering about in the quest of adventure, the dogs struck the trail of a vagabond cat. She sought safety in the sleeping Sok. The excitement caused by the passage of the pack of hounds-full cry and hullabaloo through the hodgepodge of unstable tents and rickety booths, over the halfawakened superstitious Moors, was a thing to wonder over and admire. |