“They endeavor to take them into the United States Court, where the old practice prevails.” “Beg pardon, ma’am,” said the Pullman conductor, approaching Mrs. Thornton, “but we are passing over the new line, which runs north of Gila River, and a view may be had of the sleeping Montezuma now, and the passengers generally like to see it.” “The sleeping Montezuma! What is that?” asked the lady addressed. “It is the giant figure of an Indian resting on his back on the top of the mountain. You can see it now quite plainly from the right-hand windows of the car.” And across the plain—in centuries gone densely peopled by some prehistoric race, and then for centuries a waste, and, since the completion of the Gila Canal, a checker-board of orchard, vineyard, and meadow, the eye looked upon the lavender-tinted mountains to the northward, and it required no aid from the imagination to behold, upon the summits of those mountains, the profile of a stately figure and majestic face, with a crown of feathers upon the brow, lying upon its back. Once there lived, in the shadow of this giant, a race, of which traces may still be found in mounds containing pottery, and in the ruins of great aqueducts, and in stone houses seven stories in height, a portion of the walls of which are still standing. “The Indians hereabouts have a story,” said the conductor, “to the effect that Montezuma went to sleep, when the sun dried up the waters, and his people died, and they say now that Morning’s canal is making the country green again, the old chief will awaken.” “You were saying,” said Doctor Eustace, by way of suggestion to the stranger, “that there are some peculiar marriage contract laws here.” “It is all expressed, sir, in the preamble to the law, and in the law itself, a copy of which I happen to have with me, as I am on the way to attend court at Yuma. Here it is,” and he offered the book to Professor Thornton. “Read it aloud, professor,” said the doctor, and the professor read:—