Tucson already drove a considerable trade with Sonora, and expected to increase this much, now that Maximilian had subsided. Its main importance, however, just then, arose from its being the headquarters of the Military District there, and the chief depot for the several posts comprising said District. The stores for Camps Lovell, Cameron, Wallen, Bowie, Goodwin, and Grant, were all received here from Fort Yuma by contractors' trains, and then re-distributed by army teams to these posts, respectively, as needed. This made considerable business, first and last, and rendered the Quartermaster at Tucson quite an important personage. The route was by sailing-vessels, semi-occasionally, down the Pacific Coast and up the stormy Gulf of California to the mouth of the Colorado; thence by cockle-shell steamers up the aggravating Colorado River to Fort Yuma; and thence by contractors' teams to Tucson--at a total cost, from San Francisco, of about _twenty cents per pound, in coin_, for every load of Government freight thus put down at Tucson. The time consumed was anywhere from two to four months, depending on the head-winds and "borers"[22] in the uncertain Gulf, the amount of water or sand in the Colorado River, and the condition of the roads and Indians generally up the valley of the Gila. Private freight, of course, largely followed the same route, _ex necessitate_, and the rates were simply ruinous to Tucson. Merchants and freighters there claimed, that the same work could be done, _via_ either Libertad or Guaymas, instead of Yuma, at a cost of not exceeding seven or eight cents per pound, coin, and in not more than from twenty to thirty days, from San Francisco, at the farthest. This, of course, meant steamers from San Francisco to the Gulf; but a coast-wise line already touched semi-monthly at Guaymas, and it was thought would also put in at Libertad, if inducement offered. Libertad lies two hundred miles off, to the southwest of Tucson, on the Gulf of California, and is a port not equal to San Francisco or San Diego, indeed; but yet it is not much behind San Pedro or Santa Barbara, and it seems is of sufficient advantages most of the year round. It is an open roadstead like the latter, but is well sheltered from all but southwest winds, and when these come, there is the broad Gulf for an offing. Guaymas, farther south, and a hundred miles farther away, is one of the best ports on the Pacific Coast; and the roads to both are excellent natural highways, unsurpassed as such in America.