On my return trip from San Diego I brought my mules into our Maricopa station in a much better condition than when I left Fort Yuma with them. My practice was this: while one of my two teams of mules was working in the coaches for a couple of hours at a walk, I would have the other team under charge of an experienced man, either ahead or behind the coaches, eating their fill of grass, beans, or whatever they could find. At the end of two hours we would change teams, giving the other set of mules their chance for loitering behind to eat. Sometimes emigrants who are going to California pasture their cattle on the bottom lands of the Colorado river for a few weeks before attempting to cross the desert; others again put on at once, in order to reach as soon as possible the excellent grazing on the coast range. We keep a mulada at Fort Yuma for our changes, which we send out every day to feed in the river bottom, under charge of a Mexican herder, bringing them in at night for safety. In crossing the Colorado desert of ninety-five miles from Fort Yuma to Carissa there is but little for animals to eat. In some few places arroyos make up to the northward, containing mezquit trees full of beans, but these are limited in number, while they are not situated at the watering places. In the mountains near Carissa, or at Vallecito, good grazing commences again. I am assured by men familiar with this section of country that good hay can be cut on the mountain sides, a few miles south of the present desert, and hauled on to the line of our road at a fair price. Mezquit beans can also be procured sufficiently near the road to be sold to travellers at reasonable rates. One advantage of our road is, that any emigrant who may be _en route_ to California can now leave his stock in Arizona to recruit, while he takes passage for San Diego or along the road to explore for himself the country over which he intends to pass. The country we stage over is a grazing and mineral country, rather than an agricultural one, though I found no lack of grain along the road. In seasons of rain an abundance of grain is raised all the way from San Antonio to Fort Clarke; from there to Birchville there are no settlements, and the grain has to be hauled from either end to the military posts between these two points; along the Rio Grande the whole country is capable of cultivation. Wheat, corn, beans, pumpkins, and onions of very superior flavor are all raised in great abundance by the Spanish population. Flour of an excellent quality is made at a mill on the Rio Grande, a couple of miles above El Paso; it is owned and managed by Simeon Hart, esq., who is the contractor for supplying with flour all the forts in that section of the country.