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Show WILD LIFE IN ARIZONA. 253 butcher, and Andy Crothers, in charge of grain- room. Altogether, the whites at the . post numbered sixteen men and four women a little colony far beyond the border of civilization, and the last whites I was to see for some hundreds of miles. The situation is pleasant and romantic. The Benito Hills, averaging five hundred feet above the plain, run directly north and south. On the west side of them is a vast inclosed basin, from which Cafion Benito breaks directly through the hills a sharp, abrupt gorge, square across the formation, with perpendicular walls entirely inaccessible. The east end of the caflon broadens into a little valley, at the mouth of which, though out on the plain, the fort is situated. A river once ran through the gorge, of which the successive periods can be traced on the sandstone walls to a height of two hundred feet. There seems to have been the original bottom of the canon, whence the river stead-ily cut deeper until it had completely drained the basin above. The river had long been dry when the fort was located, but several springs in the east end of the canon created a stream sufficient to irrigate a section of the land on the plain. Here the Navajoes had raised corn and melons from time immemorial ; they had no other vegetables when found by the whites. The present occupants of Defiance have thrown a dam across this end of the cafion, producing a beautiful artificial lake some three hundred yards long, and rising so high as to leave barely room for a wagon- road. The lake is strongly alkaline, but a few rods below is a spring of the nicest and purest water to be found in these mountains. It is the one important treasure of this post, which, with-out it, would be almost uninhabitable. In the States, towns are lo-cated according to convenience for trade ; in the mountains, settlement is determined by the presence of never- failing water. I had exhausted the sights near Defiance, and was eager to be off. Mr. Reams called in Juerro, the old war- chief of the Navajoes, and together they selected an intelligent young man to be my guide to Moqui. The Navajoes were scattering out on their summer hunt and trading trips, and we were likely soon to have abundant company. My new guide took a stout burro for the trip, while I rode a good-sized American horse. I was to provision myself and one man to the Mormon settlements, and one man back, besides his fee. Thus ran the bill : Thirty pounds of flour, ten pounds of bacon, ten pounds of sugar, five pounds of coffee, and six boxes of sardines, the whole cost-ing but twenty dollars. The same sum to my guides, and five dollars for the hire of a burro, made the total expense, for a trip of nearly five hundred miles, forty- five dollars not much more than railroad fare. |