The first white man of unimpeachable record to see Casa Grande was that Padre Eusebio Kino, of whom we heard at San Xavier and who gave the ruin its Spanish name. He learned of it from his Indians, and in 1694 visited the place, saying mass in one of its rooms. There is some reason to identify the spot with Chichiticale, or Red House, a ruin noted in the reports of Fray Marcos de Niza and of Coronado, both of whom probably passed not far from Casa Grande on their way to Zuñi, but most scholars now reject this theory of identity. After Kino the ruin was frequently examined by explorers and written about up to the American occupation. Anza and his San Francisco colonists camped a few miles distant, and the commandant with his two friars, Padres Garcés and Font, inspected the place with great interest on October 31, 1775. Font in his diary gives a circumstantial account of it, calling it _La Casa de Moctezuma_ (Montezuma’s House), and narrates a tradition of the neighboring Pima Indians as to its origin. It seems[96] that long ago, nobody knows how long, there came to that neighborhood an old man of so harsh and crabbed a disposition that he was called Bitter Man (_el Hombre ’Amargo_, in Padre Font’s version). With him were his daughter and son-in-law, and for servants he had the Storm Cloud and the Wind. Until then the land had been barren, but Bitter Man had with him seeds which he sowed, and with the help of the two servants abundant crops grew year after year, and were harvested. It was these people who built the Great House, and they dwelt there, though not without quarrels because of Bitter Man’s character, so that even Storm Cloud and Wind left him at times, but they came back. After many years, however, all went away—whither, who knows—and were heard of no more forever. Casa Grande may also be reached by conveyance from Florence on the Arizona Eastern Railway, from which point it is distant a dozen miles or so. Owing to the extreme summer heat of this desert country, the trip to the ruin is most comfortably made in the late autumn, winter or early spring. There is a resident care-taker who acts as guide. CHAPTER XVI SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA “Shall they say of you, you have been to Rome and not seen the Pope?” Yet that is what will be said if you turn back at the Colorado River and leave Southern California out of your Southwestern travels. However, few people do that. The fear is that in their haste to reach that tourist playground, they may neglect too much of what the preceding chapters have dwelt upon. Intent upon seeing the Pope, they may do scant justice to Rome.