The Arizona sentinel., 1895-08-03
ANCIENT RUINS.

The oldest evidences of civilization on the Pacific Coast now extant, are those left among che ruins of the Cliff Dwellers, those that can be trac- ed in the ancient canalsystem of New River and those left in the remains of the great irrigation canals of Castle Dome and Casa Grande, and the ruins that mark the ancient cities of the latter, along the valley of the Gila. Thousands of years have gone down into the oblivion of the un- known past, since these plainly writ ten volumes were closed. No one is left even to repeat the legends coR- nected with their beginning, existence and downfall. When and by whom these vast regions were peopled, their length of abode, and the causes or fate which drove them away, or ban Yshed them from their homes, are mysteries buried in the graves of bye gone days, the records of which are now scarcely traceable, though once written in plainest lines in the fertile valleys and on the adamantine rocks of the hillside and mountain tops, where today only faint line tracings are to be found; still enough to show that these ancient settlers and farm CTS, were intelligent, wealthy and powerful and that their numbers were as countless almost as the grass in the verdant fields No evidences are left that floods famines, plaques, pestilence or war banished them from the face of the soil, but they are gone and no enc IS left tc tell the tale.
 Lieut.. Frank L. Cushing. probably theablest archeologist living, and the oldest of them all, gives, 1t as his opinion that some of these rivers are at least 10000 years old and that these ancient canals were constructed in the Sth or 9th century, and that probably more than million people lived along the Gila and its branches, while it has been estimated that half million more occupied the region covered by the, Castle Dome canal which extended to and below Yuma, and another million in the New River Valley, as all the evidences found connected with these canals, with the ancient pottery and other household and agricultural appliances go to show that they were settled and occupied in the same age and by the same people.
 Modern knowledge goes back lit tie mere than three centuries and a half; 9 years before the founding of San Augustine, 67 years before the settlement of Jamestown and 80 years before the Mayfower was moored off Plymouth Rock; when the Spanish adventures Velasco de Cor onado, and little later, Antonio de Espejo visited this section with their little bands of followers. But these only came for gold, for great and sudden wealth, with but little or no labor.
 But not until hundred years later did Father Kino and his patient as sociates come, teaching agriculture to the Indians. In 1887 hetounded the mission of Guevavi south of Tucson and in the next thirty years had nc less than nine fourishing mission! on the waters of the Gila. These early pioneers found ruins of house: yet four stories high, with walls five and six feet thick, houses enclosed within other walls of fine cement and strong mortar, more than thirty feet 
 thick. In one of these ancient cities which was six miles square and sur rounding by canal 2 miles 1T length, % feet wide and l2 deep they found the ruins of I2 otheI buildings having walls six feet thicl of fine cement, the wood work o which had been burned Some 0 these old canals, which had been usec for irrigation they could painIy trac, for GO miles in length.
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 OWING to press of otEer business the Immigration Commissioner coul not get up any matter this week, bu