I wrote of them
as they had appeared to me in those early years, and, strange as
it may seem, I did not once stop to think if the people and the
lands still existed.
For a quarter of a century I had lived in the day that began with
reveille and ended with "Taps."
Now on this enchanted island, there was no reveille to awaken us
in the morning, and in the evening the only sound we could hear
was the "ruck" of the waves on the far outer shores and the sad
tolling of the bell buoy when the heaving swell of the ocean came
rolling over the bar.
And so I wrote, and the story grew into a book which was
published and sent out to friends and family.
As time passed on, I began to receive orders for the book from
army officers, and then one day I received orders from people in
Arizona and I awoke to the fact that Arizona was no longer the
land of my memories. I began to receive booklets telling me of
projected railroads, also pictures of wonderful buildings, all
showing progress and prosperity.
And then came letters from some Presidents of railroads whose
lines ran through Arizona, and from bankers and politicians and
business men of Tucson, Phoenix and Yuma City. Photographs
showing shady roads and streets, where once all was a glare and a
sandy waste. Letters from mining men who knew every foot of the
roads we had marched over; pictures of the great Laguna dam on
the Colorado, and of the quarters of the Government Reclamation
Service Corps at Yuma.
These letters and pictures told me of the wonderful contrast
presented by my story to the Arizona of today; and although I had
not spared that country, in my desire to place before my children
and friends a vivid picture of my life out there, all these men
seemed willing to forgive me and even declared that my story
might do as much to advance their interests and the prosperity of
Arizona as anything which had been written with only that object
in view.
My soul was calmed by these assurances, and I ceased to be
distressed by thinking over the descriptions I had given of the
unpleasant conditions existing in that country in the seventies.
In the meantime, the San Francisco Chronicle had published a good
review of my book, and reproduced the photograph of Captain Jack
Mellon, the noted pilot of the Colorado river, adding that he was
undoubtedly one of the most picturesque characters who had ever
lived on the Pacific Coast and that he had died some years ago.
