File:Old Mexico and her lost provinces; a journey in Mexico, southern California, and Arizona, by way of Cuba (1883) (14781549305).jpg

Identifier: oldmexicoherlost1883bish (find matches)
Title: Old Mexico and her lost provinces; a journey in Mexico, southern California, and Arizona, by way of Cuba
Year: 1883 (1880s)
Authors: Bishop, William Henry, 1847-1928
Subjects: Mexico -- Description and travel California -- Description and travel Arizona -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York, Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: Brown University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brown University

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or on any other basis. Tucson, from a distance, in early morning or late after-noon, is level, low, square, and brown, with a mellowlight upon it and the castellated mountains behind it.In the foreground you see lazy ox-wains, a prospector,perhaps, with his pots and kettles, and a mounted Mexi-can towing by a lariat a bull, which ducks its head invain resistance. From a distance it is thoroughly for-eign, and of attractive promise. There is something ofthe Dead Sea apple in the realization of this promise.If Ruskin be right in holding that a house should be ofthe general color of the soil on which it stands, Tucsonmay lay claim to great artistic merit. It is entirely ofadobe brick of the natural mud-color. Violent rain-storms occur, to the detriment of paint and kalsomine,on such a friable surface, and their use becomes a seri-ous question of economy. Tucson has great antiquity as a mere corporate ex-istence. It was founded by one of the early Spanish ex- CAMF LOWELL, TUCSON, ETC. 503
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504 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. peditions that came up the Santa Crnz Yallej in questof the reputed treasure of tlie Aztecs in tlie fabled landof Cibola, but retains no visible trace of age. If therewere ever any monuments of importance, they have effec-tually vanished. Even the church is new. Such foreign-ness as there is consists of a very provincial Mexicansqualor. The considerations of interest about it are of a purelyutilitarian character, as: how it is to be paved, drained,lighted, provided wnth an adequate water supply, so asnot to have to pay four cents a bucket for it, as at pres-ent; and how it is to get rid of its malarial fevers andshabby rookeries. A writer in one of the papers one day paid a glowingeulogy to its peculiar situation, in the desert. He heldthat this was a matter not only of those material prod-ucts which I have mentioned, but also of the highestmoral and intellectual advantages. It was apropos of theestablishment of a public library. No great idea ha

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