In many places along the Rio Grande our road lies through cornfields miles in length. At Tucson we found no difficulty in purchasing corn and barley for our mules; flour from wheat grown in the Santa Cruz valley, and ground at Tucson by the Mexicans; also beans and onions. At Maricopa station we bought, of the Indians, flour, beans, peas, green and dried pumpkins, chickens, eggs, corn, and wheat. At Fort Yuma every thing has to be imported. There is a considerable importation there of flour, pinola, pounded parched corn, jerked beef, and sugar, called pinoche, all of which comes on pack animals from Sonora; no doubt a large trade will spring up from this when Colorado City becomes of consequence. Nearly everything is now brought from San Francisco by way of the Gulf of California and steamer up the Colorado river. Arizona ought to be supplied through Guyamas, a Mexican port on the Gulf of California. Ours is emphatically a stage road. If it were a rich agricultural country all the way from San Antonio to San Diego, it would be impossible for a stage line to cross it in schedule time until some remote day, when the whole distance shall have been settled, and towns built at convenient distances, with good roads connecting them. Our present road would be called a superior one in any State for thirteen hundred miles of its length, and a fair road the remainder of the distance, save twenty-two miles of sand in the Colorado desert, from Cook’s Wells to Alamo Mucho. In the valley of the Rio Grande I had an application from an old mountain man, who wanted a situation as guide. This man had trapped beaver in all the principal streams falling into the Gila and Colorado rivers. He said the trappers pronounced our present route across Arizona a good one at all seasons of the year. I had a good opportunity of knowing the nature of the climate we have to contend with. Leaving San Antonio in August, and going directly through, I passed over the road in the hottest months of the year. Then, leaving San Diego October 23, and spending nearly three months returning, I experienced the winter weather over the same country. It was very warm in San Antonio in July; but when we had once commenced ascending to the table lands of Texas, the heat became comparatively moderated, with nights particularly pleasant. In going down the Gila, where we were descending toward the level of the sea, the heat was very great, so much so that, for comfort, and having a full moon, we travelled by night and lay by during the middle of the day. In my experience of the heat on the Gila, which looks so formidable, as marked by the thermometer, I suffered much less with that instrument indicating a hundred and over than I have suffered in the Atlantic States with the thermometer at 85 or 90. The air was pure and clear, the heat produced a copious perspiration, and gave no feeling of oppression in breathing.