Salt River herald., 1878-12-07
The Heart of Arizona,

To those who have learned to look on Arizona as a country destitute of timber and embellished chiefly by thorns and cacti, it will he a pleasant surprise to hear of the great variety and beauty of timber and vegetation found in those parts of the territory which are blessed by copious rain- fall. One of the most attractive of these parts is that lying between Verde and Apache and at the south- ern edge of the great pine-clad Mogol- lones Mesa. This mesa underlies pine forest of considerable width and several hundred miles long. Its pines appeared to us to be of some variety between yellow and sugar pine; the wood is soft and splits well into very fair shakes; they. arc of as fine growth as any pines we ever saw down east" On the mesa and south of it are found frs eight feet in di- ameter, magnificent trees; quaking poplar (asp), in moist places, eighteen inches to two feet through, running up eighty and one hundred feet with out limb, straight as an arrow and with bark as white as if painted; reg ular white oak of considerable size, of fine bOle and lovely foliage; Emory's oak, dark evergreen peculiar to Arizona and differing from the live oak of California, on whose lower fo- liage horses are particularly fond of browsing, and which is quite familiar to every one who has traversed the country south of Tucson, juniper trees like those near Prescott, but larger, with trunks five feet through, and lots of them three feet through, and running up many feet without a branch, all the year around dropping berries on which hogs keep fat as they do at Houdon's ranch in Spring valley in this country we are writing about; fine black walnuts, under one of which as much as four grain sacks full of nuts have been gathered, with their graceful light green young fronds and aromatic ordor; syca- morcs, cottonwoods and willows along the creeks, that would be subjects for exhibition in any other country; the regular New England rock, or sugar. maple, from which sugar will be made and sold this coming spring by Yan- kees, who know what the tree is, and who do not despise trifles or labox; red cedars two feet through and run ming up ten or twelve feet without a branch, enough to make cigar boxes for the whole country; white ash two feet through and with faultless trunks tor thirty feet from the ground. Such are some of the trees found in that bonny part of Arizona. Wild fruits are abundant, but are chiefly berries. Currants of about the size of Isabella grapes grow there like gooseberries, but thornless- June is the month for strawberries, In July come raspber- ries thicker than they grow in Michi- gan and thick enough to give red tinge to the shrubbery seen at little distance. Wild grapes are abundant but of little value. Wild hops make a perfect jungle of the spots they love, and add much to the charming ap- pearance of that country. This sec ton of Arizona is now being settled, as it would have been years ago but for the tenacity with which the Apaches fought to hold it. What it is now yielding to the efforts of hu- man industry we shall hereafter try to present clearly to our readers, and such evidence as must silence the scoffers at Arizona.-ArizOnG Sentinel.