It is hardy blood, that of the pioneer, good stock on which to found the development of a country. For years the West has been the lodestone for those adventurous spirits who love the outdoor and exciting life of the mining prospector, the cow-boy, the hunter--a healthy, rugged lot, virtually all pure Americans. The Rough Riders sprang from this element. But probably the most distinct single human invasion of the Southwest was made by the irreconcilables of the Confederate Army after the Civil War. They could not endure the Federal domination of the reconstruction period, or else they had lost all their property, and with it their hope of rising again in their old neighborhood, and so they set westward, remaining, as immigrants usually do, in the same latitude as that from which they came. Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona all have a strong substratum of the Old South, still possessing many of the bitternesses left by the great conflict, and yet rising with the opportunities of the new land, and adding to its development peculiar pride, dignity and often culture. Owing to its wildernesses and its contiguity to Mexico, the Southwest was also for many years the refuge of outlaws from all parts of the country--an element which, though small, was so perniciously active that it earned an undue prominence in fiction and contemporary literature, giving the country a complexion of evil which it did not deserve. This element still effervesces in a train-robbery, but its effect on the Southwest has been inconsequential. All these earlier sources of population, however, were small compared with the great inundation of the last few years, following the extension of the railroads, the crowding of other parts of the country, and the hard times of 1893, which, causing discontent among many Easterners and Northerners, tempted them to try new fields of enterprise. There are virtually no native-born Anglo-Saxons of voting age in New Mexico and Arizona--at least, they are so few as to be a wonder and a pride. In Texas there are many, for the changes in that part of the Southwest are a step older and possibly not quite so rapid, although Texas, too, is overrun with people from every part of the country. It is safe to ask any middle-aged man what part of the East he is from. Of this later influx of population there are representatives from every part of the United States, with a specially large number from Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Missouri--the Middle West. In many cases these settlers had first immigrated to the States just beyond the Mississippi, and had there taken up farms; but uncertain rain and crop-failures drove them onward to the irrigated valleys of the region, and there they are to-day.