In considering the development features of the settlement of central Arizona, the Author feels it might be interesting to note that the immigrants saw in the Salt River Valley many evidences of the truth of the Book of Mormon, covering the passage northward of the Nephites of old. There was found a broad valley that had lain untouched for a thousand years, unoccupied by Indian or Spaniard till Jack Swilling and his miners dug the first canal on the north side of the river a few years before the coming of the Saints to Jonesville. The valley had lain between the red-skinned agriculturists of the Gila and the Apache Ishmaelites of the hills. There had been no intrusion of Spanish or Mexican grants. The ground had been preserved for utilization of the highest sort by American intelligence. Yet this same intelligence found much to admire in the works of the people who had passed on. From the river had been taken out great canals of good gradient, and it was clear that they had been dug by a people of homely thrift and of skill in the tilling of the soil. There still were to be seen piles of earth that marked where at least seven great communal houses had formed nuclei for a numerous people. These were served by 123 miles of canals. These people were not Aztec. According to accepted tradition, the Aztecs passed southward along the western coast, reaching Culiacan, in northwestern Mexico, about 700 A.D., and there named themselves the Mextli. The ancient people of the Salt River Valley probably had moved, or were moving, about that same time. They appear to have been of Toltecan stock and undoubtedly came from the southward, from a land where was known the building of houses and wherein had been established religious cults of notable completeness and assuredly of tenacious hold. Just why they left the Salt River Valley is as incomprehensible as why they entered it, and how long they stayed is purely a matter of conjecture. Probably occupation of the valley was not simultaneous. Probably the leaving was by families or clans, extending over a period of many years. Probably they left on the ending of a cycle of peace, on the coming to the Southwest of the first of the Apache, or of similar marauders, who preyed upon the peaceful dwellers of the plains. That they were people of peace cannot be doubted, people who in the end had to defend their towns, yet sought no aggression. [Illustration: ANCIENT CALALS COVERING 123 MILES, AND PUEBLOS OF SALT RIVER VALLEY. Surveyed by Herbert R. Patrick] Evidences of Well-Developed Culture