The Florence tribune., 1895-06-15

Forever flashing round summer sky.r
 Arizona is at once the oldest and the newest country in what is LOW the United States. Three hundred and sixty years ago Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Andreas Dorante, Alonzo del Castillo Maldonado, and Esteyan, an Arabian negro, first set foot on Ari- zona soil. They were shipwrecked in l527 on the coast of Florida, captured by the Indians and held in captivity for seven years, finally escaped and made their way across the continent to New Mexico and Arizona, and thence to Culiacan, Mexico. They dis covered the Mississippi ten years be- fore De Soto stood upon its banks, and found standardization on the Rio Grande and in the Moqui and Zuni villages in Arizona more than quar- ter of century before the settlement of San Augustine or Jamestown, and nearly century before the Puritans landed on Plymouth rock. Leaving the Moqui villages, Cabeza de vaca and his party passed south and visited the Casa Grande ruins, ten miles from the present site of Florence, which were then rnins, but in much better state of preservation than now.
 ANCIENT RUINS.
 Joaquin Miller, in an article in the New York Independent, says:
 In the second place, Casa Grande' is an old ruin-a very old ruin. Many men will will calmly assert and assure you over and over again that this is but the relic of temporary oc- cupation by tie spariards when t-gelz- ing this land in search of the Seven Cities of the Bull The truth is Alvar Nunez Cabeza de vaca visited the ruins of Casa Grande about the year 153S. A detailed account of his discovery of these ruins have myself read in the library of Mexico. And the antiquity of these and other ruins in this region make up very important fact in the testimony of the case. which should like to present to the world in this brief paper. Let this, then, be well settled in your mind these ruins of Arizona, or 'Arizuna, as the Spaniards called this region of the Gila, are old older than history; as old, maybe, as the oldest ruins on the Nile of Egypt. This region, then, was once densely peopled. No allurements of gold, no lust of coIlquest-nothing at all but the generous soil and the genial eli mate built up city here; many cities, indeed, up and down the land, that must have rivaled in splendor and ex- tent the storied cities of the Nile of old. If, then, the simple, primitive and half-civilized people of the dead past made garden of this land where the world has always insisted and in- sists now on locating a desert, can we not do something with our blows. our ditches, our dozens of improved methods? Let us try and get down to the facts of this contradiction and see who is at fault. Let us see whether it is the land, the climate or the peo- pie themselves"
 But it is not the purpose of this arti- cle to deal with ancient history. Suf- ice it to say that the land discovered by Cabeza de Vaca has proven to be
 MOST WONDERFULLY FERTILE,
 and in no place in the United States can its like be found. Even in the six teenth century remains were found oi many ancient buildings and canals and nothing is left to tell of the build. CTS. There were no traditions among the Indian tribes then, and there art none now, to tell us of the people whC erected those wonderful dwellingl eight and ten stories high, and whs dug canals such as engineers of tn, present day pronounce to be works O skill.
 The accompanying map of the Casl Grande valley will give better idei of the country than columns of descrip tive writing. The old ruins are situ ated in township south, range 8 east and surrounding them are twenty-fiv townships (s26 ,00O acres) of as beauti ful and productive land as lies unde the sun. It is useless to deny tha under our present water system ther is nothing like sufficient water to irri gate this vast body of land.
 THE CASA eRANDE VALLEY CANAL, as represented, is forty-three mile