If you happen never to have speculated in copper or archaeology and are not a Southwesterner, it is quite likely that you have not heard of the Verde Valley. It is a somewhat sinuous cleft up and down the very center of Arizona, holding in its heart the Verde River (_el Rio Verde_, or Green River, of the Spaniards) which has its source under the San Francisco Peaks, and after 150 miles or so through cramped cañons and sunny bottomlands of more or less fertility, joins the Salt River about 50 miles east of the latter’s junction with the Gila. On the western edge of its upper reaches are the smelter towns of Clarkdale and Jerome,[83] and the famous copper mines of the United Verde Company. Across the valley from these, to the eastward and bordering the great Mogollon Mesa that divides the basin of the Little Colorado and the Gila, is that Red Rock country referred to in a previous chapter, together with the Verde’s beautiful tributary, Oak Creek; while some 30 miles to the south there enters the Verde another stream called Beaver Creek. It is upon the latter the scene of this present chapter is laid. [Illustration] OLD GOVERNOR’S PALACE, SANTA FE, N. M. The center for three centuries of the political life of New Mexico, under the successive regimes of Spaniard, Indian, Mexican and American. [Illustration] MONTEZUMA’S CASTLE Near Camp Verde, Arizona. A beautiful specimen of prehistoric Cliff architecture, with which, however, Montezuma had nothing to do.