第10章
- Memoir of the Proposed Territory of Arizona
- Sylvester Mowry
- 1000字
- 2016-03-04 16:47:38
Crabbe and his party by the Mexicans at Cavorca created a desire for revenge throughout all California. Companies have been formed, and large parties are settling in Arizona, near the Mexican line, with the ulterior object of overrunning Sonora, and revenging the tragedy in which was shed some of the best blood of the State. The appropriation by the last Congress of two hundred thousand dollars for the construction of a wagon road from El Paso to Fort Yuma, and the two mail contracts, semi-monthly and semi-weekly, which involve an expenditure of nine hundred thousand dollars per annum, will afford employment to a host of people, and draw at once to the neighborhood of the route an active and energetic population. The new wagon and mail route traverses the Territory of Arizona throughout its entire length.
Along the mail route, at intervals, military posts will be established. These and the necessary grazing stations will create points around which settlements will at once grow up, and the country, now bare, will show everywhere thriving villages. The Southern Pacific Railroad, which will be built because it is necessary to the country, will find its way easily through Arizona.
It is no exaggeration to say that the mining companies, in their own interest, will be forced to subscribe enough to the stock of the company to insure its success. The Arizona Copper Mining Company is now paying $100 per ton for the transportation of its ores from the mines to Colorado city. One year's freight money at this rate would build many miles of the road. The silver mining companies will be only too glad to get their ores to market at so cheap a rate, as their proportion of the subion to the railroad. Iron and coal are both found in the Territory,--the former especially in great abundance. Texas has guaranteed the road to El Paso, by her generous legislation; Arizona will build it, with her mineral wealth, to Fort Yuma, the eastern boundary of California, and California will do the rest. The first terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad will doubt less be on the Gulf of California, at the Island of Tiburon, or more probably Guyamas. A steam ferry across the Gulf, a short railroad across the peninsula of Lower California to a secure harbor on the Pacific, (where a steamer will take passengers and freight in four days to San Francisco,) is the most natural course of this route. In view of this probability, all the available points for such a terminus on the Gulf have been, or are in progress of being, secured by capitalists, either by obtaining grants from the Mexican Government, or by purchase from private individuals.
Already Guyamas is owned in great part by English and American capitalists. A port on the Gulf of California is necessary to our Pacific possessions, and must be ours sooner or later. The longer it is delayed, the worse for American progress on the Pacific.
Arizona needs it at once, as a depot for the export of her ores, and for the import of goods for the supply of her population.
The Mormon war has closed for years the great emigrant road to California and Oregon, over the South Pass and Salt Lake valley, leaving open only the route along the 32d parallel of latitude, through Arizona. This route is by far the most practicable at all seasons of the year, and the closing of the South Pass route by the Mormon difficulty is an additional and urgent argument in favor of the early organization of this Territory. Fifty thousand souls will move towards the Pacific early in the spring, if the route is opened to a secure passage.
The present condition of Arizona Territory is deplorable in the extreme. Throughout the whole country there is no redress for crimes or civil injuries-﹏o courts, no law, no magistrates. The Territory of New Mexico, to which it is attached by an act of Congress, affords it neither protection nor sustenance. The following extracts from letters received by the writer tell the story of the necessity for early action on the part of Congress, in urgent terms.
TUBAC, GADSDEN PURCHASE, August 15, 1857.
Affairs in the Territory have not improved. A party of Americans (our countrymen) had made an "excursion" into Sonora, captured a train of mules, and killed several Mexicans. Upon their return to the Territory with their ill-gotten booty, the citizens formed a company and took the property away from them, and returned it to the owners in Magdalena, [a town of Sonora┅Ed.] and delivered the robbers up to Major Steen, commanding first dragoons, to be held in custody until Courts should be organized. They have again been turned loose upon the community. In justice to Major Fitzgerald I must say he was in favor of retaining them in custody, and has generally maintained favoring law and order in the Territory, but as he is only second in command he has no absolute authority.
We have no remedy but to follow the example so wide spread in the Union, and form a "Vigilance Committee"--contrary to all good morals, law, order, and society. Can you do nothing to induce the government to establish authority and law in this country, and avert this unhappy alternative?
It is not desired by any good citizens, and tends to anarchy and mobocracy, causing disloyalty in our own citizens and bringing the reproach of foreigners upon our republican institutions. It is impossible to progress in developing the resources of the country under this state of affairs. The greatest objection the capitalists of San Francisco have to aiding me in the development of silver mines, is the insecurity of property, want of protection from government, and general distrust of fair and honest legislation.
They have no confidence that the guarantees of the GADSDEN TREATYwill be respected by the United States, in regard to land titles under the Mexican government.
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