The Apache Trail detour cuts the traveler out of stopping off at one of the most interesting little cities of the Southwest—Tucson.[91] It may be that not all will find this oasis town, lapped in the desert and girt about with low mountains, as much to their liking as I do, but I believe it possesses features worth going back on one’s tracks to see; for it has a decided character of its own. With an out-and-out modern American side, there is the grace of an historic past, whose outward and visible sign is a picturesque Spanish quarter in adobe, pink, blue and glaring white, clustering about a sleepy old plaza and trailing off through a fringe of Indian _ranchería_ to the blazing desert. The region roundabout is associated with pretty much all the history that Arizona had until it became part of the United States. The Santa Cruz Valley, in which Tucson lies, was a highway of travel during three centuries between Old Mexico and the Spanish settlements and Missions of Pimería Alta. Through this valley or the neighboring one of San Pedro (there is a difference of opinion on this point), Brother Marcos de Niza, the first white man to put foot in Arizona, must have passed in 1539 on his way to Zuñi’s Seven Cities; and this way, the following year, came Coronado upon the expedition that made of New Mexico a province of Spain. A century later the region was the scene of the spiritual labors of Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino, a devoted Jesuit missionary to the Indians—a man of mark in his time, to whom is credited the founding of the Spanish Mission San Francisco Xavier del Bac, about 9 miles south of Tucson. The present beautiful structure, however (Tucson’s crack sight for tourists), was not erected until long after Padre Kino’s day.