Most of the modern settlements of the Rio Verde are along the upper portion of its course. Prescott is situated on Granite creek, one of the sources of the river, and along other tributaries, as far down as the southern end of the great valley in whose center Verde is located, there are many scattered settlements; but from that point to McDowell there are hardly a dozen houses all told. This region is most rugged and forbidding. There are no roads and few trails, and the latter are feebly marked and little used. The few permanent inhabitants of the region are mostly “cow men,” and the settlements, except at one point, are shanties known as “cow camps.” There are hundreds of square miles of territory here which are never visited by white men, except by “cow-boys” during the spring and autumn round-ups. Scattered at irregular intervals along both sides of the river are many benches and terraces of alluvium, varying in width from a few feet to several miles, and comprising all the cultivable land in the valley of the river. Since the Verde is a mountain stream with a great fall, its power of erosion is very great, and its channel changes frequently; in some places several times in a single winter season. Benches and terraces are often formed or cut away within a few days, and no portion of the river banks is free from these changes until continued erosion has lowered the bed to such a degree that that portion is beyond the reach of high water. When this occurs the bench or terrace, being formed of rich alluvium, soon becomes covered with grass, and later with mesquite and “cat-claw” bushes, interspersed with such cottonwood trees as may have survived the period when the terrace was but little above the river level. Cottonwoods, with an occasional willow, form the arborescent growth of the valley of the Verde proper, although on some of the principal tributaries and at a little distance from the river groves of other kinds of trees are found. All these trees, however, are confined to the immediate vicinity of the river and those of its tributaries which carry water during most of the year; and as the mountains which hem in the valley on the east and west are not high enough to support great pines such as characterize the plateau country on the north and east, the aspect of the country, even a short distance away from the river bottom, is arid and forbidding in the extreme. [Illustration: Plate XIII. MAIN COURT, RUIN NEAR LIMESTONE CREEK.]