Weekly Phoenix herald., 1884-12-18
What a Stranger Saw at Our
 Territorial Far.


 Register, Illinois writes con- corning our Fair as follows:
 I started in search of tho Great American Desert. We went were 1t was in our school day atlases-and found ourselves in the midst of an agricultural fair. It was held in Phoenix, the "Garden City ot Arizo- na." And a garden it seemed when after the dreary ride over sand plains and cactus fields it burst into our view, tree embo owered, and surround ed by green fields. Of course this venture pre- supposed water, and water is there in abundance, furnished by the Gila and Salt rivers for very appropriately we had taken 'ur post election trip "up SaIt river" Eight irrigating canals with innumerable branches, convey the water through farms and city streets and wherever it flows luxuriant veg etation abeunds. For hundreds of miles we had seen no trees except the pinion and other stunted moun- tain growth, but here a well shaded avenue of four miles long leads us into the city, whose every street is bordered with trees, and it's plaza IS crowded with them. Of course the streets are lined with acequias, and through which the life-giving waters flows.
 The fair ground.i is about two miles out of town, and the ride thither shows more strange sights than you would see in a week at hoEe. Jacals and Jacalitas = Mexican houses, big and Iittle-made of poles set upright, matched with sugar cane CT corn stalks, and embellished with enormous strings Uf red pepper or chili. Adobe houses swarming with Mexican men, women children, burros and dogs, Indians on horse- back and on foot, ID blankets or in breech cloths, fields of alfalfa, of red pepper, of sugar cane, growing side by side; great, fat porkers, rival ing their brothers in Illinois, though they may never have tasted corn in their lives, and o9er all a sky so blue and sunlight SC brilliant, No> vember though it be, that the very clouds of dust are glcrified.
 Arriving at the fair grounds, we find arrangements the most primi- tive, for this is Arizona's first fair and three months before its grounds were a farm, on which grew some of its exhibits. The race track Is the most conspicuous feature, and here every afternoon were races of all sorts, trOtting races and running races, burro races, sack races, foot races from which Indians were ex~ cluded, and Indian races, squaw races, bicycle races, slow mule races and so on, adinhnitum. Then there was equestrlanism by gentlemen, by ladies, by boys, and an Indian blow ing match. The Indian blow would set Deere craZy-a long straight stick with short crooked suck stuck on the end of it. And his pitchfork is just a forked stick, which Dame Nature kindly furn~ ishes him. But if his tools are not of the most approved fashion, he makes good use of them, he "a ises the finest wheat in the territory, the finest we ever saw anywhere, and great quantities of it. I am told the white farmers often go to the Mari copa Indians for their seed wheat because it is so much better in qual, ity and so much cleaner than. their own. The only exhibits of wheat in this fair were made by these In dians, fact which greatly mortified their white neighbors.
 The exhibit of these Ma1Icopa h. dIans exceeded In variety and inter- est that in any other department Besides the wheat, of which there were several entries, they had on exhibition large variety of seeds which they use for food, grinding them up and making them in to bread. They seem to utilize eve ry~ thing; among the seeds so used were some very fine black ones, from the careless weed, much like our pig weed, and red seeds even finer; there were common beans in great variety and mesquite beans the screw be an, not a bean at all, but the fruit of a prickly bush, from which they ma ke and exhibit a bran coral looking loaf of bread, sweet meats made from the fruit of sahuaro, or giant cactus, very palatable, groundparch> ed wheat and many other things, demonstrating that the Indian cui- sine is not confined to dog meat and succotash.
 Here was exhibited the dragons horn from whose fibre mats and baskets are made; the Aenorm ous baskets woven of mescal or agaye fibre, Tn which, swung across her, shoulders and held in place by band ar round her forehead.the squaw carries burdens larger than herself; the great olis, water cooler, and the panther>skin quiyer full of arrows. Not the least interesting part teftlre exhibit WAS the Indians themselves, who sclustered around and seemed pleased with the notice their produe- tions. elicited.
 Near. by the Indian department were SIX bales of cotton to which WAS awarded, in addition to the Territorial premium, the1premium offered some two or three years ago Gto4oc rro1ror-r, ant fo,.