Arizona republican., 1909-02-22
GLANCE 0F THE VALLEY
 BY AN FASTENER
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 | follows: After they are shorn the
 eve flocks go to the desert and are lambed there. It depends on the rain fall how long they stay. If it is a good season they spend four months there and then are trailed away to the
 mountains, reaching the railroad in time to take the lambs off and ship to
 market. The winter-dropped lambs go as early as May and keep going all
 summer and fall, according to the sea l son they are dropped. The wethers
 and dry sheep are shorn a little later | and are taken where the best feed can
 be found. Consequently Phoenix looks after a great many of the sheep own
 CTS in winter, and in summer they are found at such places as Ash Fork, Flagstaff and Holbrook Those sheep
 mems lines have fallen in pleasant places. In winter their abode is amid
 delightful scenes where the orange and
 the lemon grow, where the sun is bright but not too warm, where the
 fig tree flourishes and the roses bloom. In summer from their eyrie height
 mile and a half above sea level they
 can look down on the valley sizzling
 under a temperature of 110 to 115 de-
 grees in the dog days of July and Au-
 gust
 One drawback. and. aside from
 prices, one only-drought, that is the
 bugbear of the Arizona sheepmen. He
 can stand one year of such disaster,
 but if it is duplicated then comes his
 hour of peril, and it means shipping or dying on the dried-up plains. With
 weak, emaciated sheep there is not
 much difference. It is disaster either
 way.
 It is a delightful ride back. the south wind blowing harder than usual
 yet 1t is pleasant to us northern folks from the land of blizzards. Before us is the ar-stretching valley. to the eye level as a board, but in reality sloping some fifteen to twenty feet to the mile in westerly direction, a great plate of land with a border of gigantic mountains around 1t. Southward the Maricopas, eastward the Camel Backs and the Four Peaks, northward the Bradshaws and the New River. west ward the White Tanks. 1 never saw finer profiles, bold. clean-cut as if some ancient Greek, or Old Mortality, whose bones lie near my Scottish home, had chiseled out the fantastic forms that stand in glorious outline against the pale blue of these southern skies. It seems to me as if this rock boiling from fires below. had been shooting towards the heavens, forced by heat upwardss and then a sudden frost had caught it and held it fast. storm tossed. and then fixed it like adamant.
 Now by the wash of ages and the flooding of rivers the soil has been l deposited from these rocky ravines and | it lies ready for the hand of man. | Countless ages engulfing centuries | have probably passed since those days | of fire and lying there the desert has | accumulated foot after foot of soil | Look at the ditches as they cut their ! way through the loam. and you will | see signs of their silent work. And | now it seems as if the hour and the | man had both come. Far away up in | the mountains the engineer is i'm pounding, by the Roosevelt dam, the | waters of the Salt river, and in few | brief years this great valley, some | sixty miles long by fifteen miles wide, | arid. sun-beaten, waterless, will be a | garden of Eden. Look at it now: see | its orange groves, it's alfalfa fields, it's | sugar beet factory, its pleasant homes | shaded by glorious trees and garnished | with flowers. Roll these all into one, and what more do you want? It Is | cr taf iv, hot Nn cannot stand 1t and work. He has to | trust to the Mexican. the Jap, the | Chinaman and the negro, and vet 1t | is this heat that gives quality to the | fruit, that makes the alfalfa bloom. | that in fact turns this desert land into | one of the most productive regions on | earth
 The old settler has worked away, | struggled. borrowed. fought, almost | died for want of water. One scheme after another failed. The outsider was caiied upon, often swindled, but of no | avail. Not till the government took | hold came the day of delivery. One | afternoon we drove out to see the | farming districts, to scan the fields, to | see the golden orange, hanging like an orb amid the glossy green, and | near by was a sound of rushing wa ters, a great stream of reddish brown liquid dashing over a dam, its foam washed up on Q sandy shore, and then it flows silently along until another obstruction bars it's way. Every now and then part of it diverted. You sec it spread over the fields and meadow lands. amid the orange and the lemon groves. II is life-giving. for to this dry soil the singing stream is like blood to the human body.
 1T the government engineers have calcl1la ted cnrracfIu fam nr,, and 1