F 1346 
 .S71 
 Copy 1 
 
 YAQUI 
 
 LAND CONVERTIBLE STOCK. 
 
 The time to buy land is when it is cheap. Land is worth 
 now in Southern California as many hundred dollars an acre as 
 it cost dollars twenty years ago. Secure property in Sonora 
 now, and make the profit yourself. 
 
 Frost destroyed five million dollars' worth of fruit in Cali- 
 fornia last year. 
 
 There are no frosts that hurt on the Yaqui. 
 
 The winds did untold damage in California year before last. 
 
 There are no destructive winds in the Yaqui country. 
 
 Southern California is suffering much this year for want of 
 water. 
 
 OiLr Yaqui River will never fail to give us all we need. 
 
 The range of temperature on the Yaqui is about the same as 
 in Los Angeles, except that it is about ten degrees warmer in 
 summer and tv/enty degrees warmer in winter. 
 
 It is a country of unrivaled healthfulness. 
 
 Sonora has always been noted for the longevity of its people. 
 
 It is in Mexico, but in the redeemed Mexico of to-day — the 
 Mexico of Diaz, and not the Mexico of Santa Ana. It is iri 
 Sonora, but not the Sonora of the California filibusters. People 
 
now have no locks on their doors, and property is as safe as it 
 is anywhere in the United States. 
 
 The Sonora and Sinaloa Irrigation Company have decided to 
 offer for sale thirty thousand shares of their new issue of land- 
 convertible stock at the rate of $6.00 a share, United States 
 currency, subject to the right to raise the price at any time, at 
 the discretion of the Directors. Every alternate share of stock 
 is exchangeable for an acre of land, with water right attached, 
 in any of the odd-numbered sections of the Company s land 
 not previously taken or appropriated. 
 
 The quotations in the appendix to this pamphlet, from the 
 most eminent and satisfactory authorities, will show the char- 
 acter, capacity and value of this land. Compared with land 
 about Los Angeles, which is now selling for from $200 to $500 
 an acre, it may be said : 
 
 1. The climate in the Yaqui country is better. We have no 
 destructive winds or frosts. There is practically no winter 
 during the whole twelve months. Three crops of Indian corn 
 can be harvested each year, and the Sonora oranges are the 
 finest in the world. 
 
 2. The soil is deeper and more fertile. In some places on 
 land similar to ours, and near us, wheat has been grown for one 
 hundred years without fertilizers, and the crop is now as good 
 as ever. 
 
 3. We have an abundant supply of water for irrigation. The 
 water-shed of the Yaqui River covers an area equal to the 
 combined areas of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, 
 and Rhode Island, and more water flows to the sea each year 
 past the head gates of our canal than is used for irrigation in 
 all North America. 
 
 At the lowest stage of the water there is an abundance for 
 all present needs, and if there is ever a scarcity it can be 
 remedied by a system of easily and cheaply constructed 
 storage reservoirs in the mountains. 
 
4. We shall have the best of markets. The local demand for 
 all breadstuffs is very great. The richest mining regions in 
 northern Mexico are in the mountains directly east of us ; our 
 lands extend to the sea, and our produce can be distributed by 
 water all along the coast, both in Mexico and in the United 
 States, and the proposed Mexican Pacific Coast Railroad runs 
 through our property. 
 
 Until our local railroad, which we have in contemplation, is 
 built, Guaymas is our railroad station, distant thirty miles 
 (over which there is communication by water most of the way) 
 from the nearest portion of our lands, and Guaymas is in 
 direct communication with New York, Chicago, St. Louis and 
 New Orleans, and is nearer to all of them than is either Los 
 Angeles or San Francisco. 
 
 The tariffs are in our favor. The United States has now 
 and always will have, at most, only a light tariff on agricultural 
 products. 
 
 Mexico, from the very necessities of her revenue, must and 
 does impose a heavy tariff. The result to us of the tariffs of 
 the two nations is that we find our market in the United States 
 substantially uninjured, while our market in Mexico is pro- 
 tected most abundantly. 
 
 Mexico is to-day the best market for breadstuffs in the world. 
 Flour is actually selling now in Sonora for $14.00 a barrel, corn 
 $1.50 a bushel, bacon and lard 40 cents a pound and sugar 20 
 cents a pound. There is abundant room in these prices to 
 allow for liberal rates of exchange and still give the producer a 
 handsome profit. It will be a long time before the local market 
 will be so exhausted that there need be any serious reduction 
 in prices. Mexico does not to-day come anywhere near feed- 
 ing her own people, and it will take many other enterprises like 
 ours to enable her to do so for many years to come. 
 
 Old " Forty-Niners " will remember the California market in 
 the times before the war. Sonora is the California of Mexico, 
 
and history repeats itself. Perhaps they may some time have 
 low prices for wheat, and have the scale on the orange trees 
 there, but these will be problems for another generation to 
 grapple with. Meanwhile, the wise man will grapple with his 
 opportunities, and there is abundant time to get in a good crop 
 of hay before the sky gets cloudy. 
 
 5. The government and the people of Mexico are now wel- 
 coming capital, enterprise and colonization from the United 
 States, and are ready to receive our settlers with open arms. 
 A wise and great statesman sits in the presidential chair of our 
 sister republic ; the iron rails have united the two nations so 
 that they have a common interest and a common future, and 
 the success of one will inevitably mean the prosperity of the 
 other. Old jealousies are dying away and a new generation is 
 on the scene. The " gringo " has become " the Yankee," and 
 we have made the great discovery that the Anglo-Saxon and 
 the Latin, the Puritan, the Californian and the Mexican all be- 
 long to the great brotherhood of man. American settlers in 
 Mexico will find a very different state of affairs there now from 
 what they have been accustomed to read of in the books, and 
 their success will be of their own making. 
 
 We have not a $700,000 Court House in the Yaqui country 
 as they have in Los Angeles, but then, on the other hand, we 
 have not a $700,000 Court House debt to pay interest on. In 
 Sonora the boom is ahead of us instead of behind us. 
 Californians will know what this means. The man that buys 
 one hundred shares of the Yaqui land convertible stock will be 
 entitled to exchange fifty shares of it for fifty acres of land, 
 with water right attached, under the Yaqui irrigating canal. 
 That fifty acres of land will produce three crops of corn, or a 
 crop of corn and a crop of wheat, or five crops of alfalfa, or, if 
 set out to oranges or lemons, will yield the best fruit in the 
 world, and do it every year. 
 
 After securing this land the purchaser will have fifty shares 
 
of stock left. Let us see what this amounts to. The Sonora 
 and Sinaloa Irrigation Company is organized under the liberal 
 Statute laws of the State of New Jersey, and has its princi- 
 pal Eastern Office at 58 William Street, New York, and its 
 Western headquarters at Cocorit, Sonora. 
 
 The Company is now the absolute and recognized owner of 
 the concession made by the Mexican Government to Don 
 Carlos Conant, August 22, 1890, and confirmed by a law of the 
 Mexican Congress, passed December 30, 1890; and of all the 
 rights and privileges, grants and conveyances of land, and 
 future contracts for the acquirement of the lands granted by or 
 acquired under this concession. 
 
 The Company is also the absolute owner in fee simple of 
 547,000 acres of land acquired under this concession, 400,000 
 acres of which lie under the Yaqui Canal, now being com- 
 pleted, and every acre of which can be irrigated by the canal, 
 and it is entitled to the exclusive use of two-thirds of all the 
 water flowing in the Yaqui River, for the irrigation of these 
 lands by means of this canal. 
 
 The concession also gives the Company very valuable im- 
 munities from Federal and local taxation, and valuable rights 
 under the rivers Mayo and Fuerte, south of the Yaqui in 
 Sonora and Sinaloa. We shall be glad to send a translated 
 copy of this concession to any one who wishes to study in 
 detail its carefully drawn provisions. 
 
 The Capital Stock of the Company consists of 200,000 shares 
 of ordinary stock, with the right to issue 100,000 shares more 
 of land-convertible stock of which this 30,000 shares is the first 
 installment. The price of this is now $6.00 a share, but it is 
 very probable that it will be raised before the 30,000 shares are 
 all sold. It may be raised at any time, and certainly no more 
 than this 30,000 shares will be offered at this price. 
 
 The proceeds of the sale of this stock will be used for the 
 completion of the canal and the improvement of the property. 
 
Work on the canal was begun in August, 1892, and has pro- 
 gressed steadily since then. The deep rock-cut at the head of 
 the canal is now about three-fourths completed, and the heavy 
 earthwork of the first four miles beyond that, which is being 
 done by a powerful Marion steam shovel, moving earth at 
 the rate of one hundred cubic metres an hour, is now about 
 finished. 
 
 The timber for the dam and head-gates has been bought, and 
 is now being transported to the head-waters of the canal, and 
 the dam will be put in at the next low water. 
 
 The contract for the remaining work has been let, and it is 
 to be finished on or before the 15th of April, 1895. We expect 
 to be able to deliver water at the upper end of the canal in 
 1894, and to supply water to any part of the lands after April, 
 
 1895. 
 
 The annual water rentals will be $1.50 per acre for one crop, 
 and $2.50 per acre for two crops, while for such crops as sugar- 
 cane, alfalfa, and other plants that require constant irrigation 
 the year round, the rental will be $3.00 per acre per year, all in 
 Mexican money. At the present rate of exchange, $1.00 of 
 our money is equivalent to about $2.00 Mexican money. After 
 deducting the land to which Don Carlos Conant and his 
 associates are entitled under the Company's contract with 
 them, and the lands to which the stockholders and bondholders 
 will be entitled in the way of exchange for their securities, the 
 Company will have left about 350,000 acres, of which 250,000 
 acres will be irrigated lands under the canal. 
 
 The stockholders will be entitled to participate, therefore, in 
 the proceeds of the sale of this 350,000 acres of land, and in 
 the profits arising from the water rentals, and in the benefits 
 conferred by the concession generally. 
 
 The water rentals alone, when the canal is in full operation, 
 will, it is fairly estimated, amount to at least $400,000 a year, 
 and the expense of maintenance will certainly be less than 
 
7 
 
 $100,000. Astute and level-headed men connected with the 
 enterprise expect this land to be worth $ioo an acre, and the 
 stock $ioo a share. A boom such as they had in California 
 would send it up to four or five times these prices, but we will 
 leave the Californians a monopoly of the boom business. 
 
 Among the many men interested in the enterprise, either as 
 its responsible managers or stockholders or investors, are the 
 Chief Engineer, Col. E. S. Nettleton of Colorado, the friend of 
 Horace Greeley and Nathan C. Meeker, and the engineer who 
 was selected to build the Greeley Canal in Colorado, the first 
 irrigating canal in the United States; and afterward the High 
 Line Canal above Denver, which, when it was built, was the 
 longest in the United States ; Captain Mann, so long associ- 
 ated with the Pecos Valley irrigating enterprise at Eddy, New 
 Mexico ; Don Carlos Conant, to whom the concession was 
 originally granted in recognition of the distinguished services 
 he had rendered to Mexico, as well on the battle-field as in the 
 council chamber; Mr. Charles H. Nettleton of Birmingham, 
 Conn.; Col. A. R. Buffington, U. S. Army ; Mr. John Burke, 
 Surrey, England ; Mr. William H. Corbin, Jersey City, N. J. ; 
 Hon. Jos. C. Hendrix, President of the National Union Bank 
 of New York, and Member of Congress for the Third District, 
 Brooklyn ; Mr. Johns Hopkins, Philadelphia ; Herbert H. 
 Logan, Phoenix, Ariz. ; Jas. F. Merriam of Springfield, Mass. ; 
 E. C. McNeil of New Haven, Conn. ; James L. McKeever, 
 Chicago ; Dr. Frederic Plank, San Jose, Cal, ; Hon. Marcus 
 Rosenthal, San Francisco; Mr. Frank French and Prof. S. M. 
 Woodbridge of Los Angeles ; Arthur L. Reed of Whittier, Mr. 
 A. Scott Chapman of San Gabriel, California ; Mr. Louis H. 
 Scott and Salter S. Clark of New York ; Mr. John Woodford 
 of Winsted, Conn. ; Mr. Abraham Van Siclen of Jamaica, L. 
 L ; Mr. Geo. W. Kenyon, New York ; Mr. George H. Sexton, 
 Hempstead, L. L, and Mr. Charles E. Phelps of Bay Shore, 
 besides many perhaps equally well-known persons of the other 
 sex. 
 
They are the kind of men and women who' succeed in what 
 they undertake. 
 
 Subscriptions to the new Land-Convertible Stock may be 
 made on the accompanying blank. 
 
 WALTER S. LOGAN, 
 Prcs. Sonora and Sinaloa Irrigation Co. 
 
 New York, May 24, 1894. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Baron Alexander von Humboldt, in his celebrated Political Essay on 
 the Kingdom of New Spain, Vol. II., page 418, published in 1808, says that 
 the aridity of some parts of Mexico "is compensated for by the extreme 
 fertility observable in the basins of the Yaqui [spelled then Hiaqui], the Mayo " 
 and some other rivers in that part of the country. 
 
 Ward, in his celebrated book Mexico in 1827, Vol. I., page 582, says: 
 
 ' ' The Valley of the River Yaqui, up to or near the presidio of 
 Buena Vista [just above the head of our canal] is a fine and fertile country, 
 inhabited by the Yaqui and Mayo Indians, who are very numerous and live 
 in towns, their houses being surrounded by beautiful gardens, highly culti- 
 vated, each family having one. Farther inward [beyond the reach of their 
 primitive methods of irrigation, but directly under the line of our canal] 
 is fine pasturage abounding in an infinite variety of herbs." 
 
 And Vol. II., page 588, he says, speaking of the same country : 
 
 ' ' The whole of this country is rich in every variety of agricultural 
 produce, for besides wheat, maize, and barley, the sugar-cane grows in the 
 valleys, with figs, pomegranates, peaches, grapes, and numberless other fruits. 
 Horned cattle, mules, and horses abound throughout the Province, and to 
 these advantages are added a most delightful climate and the facility of a 
 communication by water with the port of Guaymas." 
 
 H, H. Bancroft, the historian, says in North Mexican States, Vol. II., 
 page 748 : 
 
 ' ' The Yaqui Valley is Egyptian in temperature and in the Nile-like 
 inundation of its fertile bottoms. "With irrigation. Nature yields her 
 treasures in such lavish abundance and variety as to mark Sonora as one of 
 the richest spots on earth." 
 
 Mr. Hamilton, in his very valuable book upon The Border States of 
 Mexico, says of the Valley of the Yaqui : 
 
 ' ' Its rich bottom lands are the most fertile of any in the State, and raise 
 in spots now under cultivation wheat, sugar-cane, cotton, the indigo plant, 
 tobacco, and the various cereals. If brought under control by proper 
 agriculture, its valuable lands could produce immense quantities of all the 
 products that an alluvial soil well irrigated will produce. 
 
 ' ' Here is an opportunity for colonization that is unrivalled in the United 
 States or the Republic of Mexico. The land is easily irrigated from the 
 river, and would provide homes for the colonization of a large population." 
 
Seiior Velasco, of Mexico, speaking of this valley says : 
 
 "Sheep raised upon its nutritious grasses attain the size of a yearling 
 calf." 
 
 Mr. Alexander Willard, for many years United States Consul at 
 Guaymas, says : 
 
 "Your lands are the choicest in Sonora, decidedly so. They are all 
 good. There is no doubt about it." 
 
 Mr. Herbert R. Patrick, of California, a well-known irrigation engineer and 
 land expert, who surveyed these lands during 1891 and 1892, and laid out the 
 line of the canal over them, says : 
 
 "I have never seen a large area of land with such remarkable uniformity 
 of surface, which will aid the perfect distribution of water so that each piece 
 of land can receive its pro rata, with the same facihty for the complete 
 and most economic irrigation, and there cannot be one foot waste land in the 
 entire subdivision of three hundred blocks, comprising nearly three hundred 
 thousand acres, and constituting an empire that offers great promise to the 
 farmer, the orchardist, and the investor. , . . 
 
 " The character of soil found here is quite similar to that of California 
 and other fruit-growing districts, though I should pronounce this much more 
 fertile than of any similar district, as there is evidently much more organic 
 matter arising from a superabundance of grasses and other small vegetation, 
 than is found in most so-called desert regions. 
 
 " The range of products is undoubtedly greater here than in California 
 and other sections of more northern latitudes, and will doubtless include many 
 varieties of semi-tropical fruits not grown in the United States. 
 
 " / unhesitatingly pronounce this district the best I have seen in irriga- 
 tio7i problems, and I earnestly recommend it to my fellow-Americans.'''' 
 
 Don Carlos Conant says of the property : 
 
 " I have been familiar with all of this land from my boyhood. I was 
 born within sight of it. I have lived there on it or near it almost all my life. 
 I have journeyed over every part of it hundreds of times. I know it thor- 
 oughly. It is all an alluvial deposit to a depth of thirty or forty feet. It will 
 produce any crop in abundance which can be grown anywhere. Search the 
 world over, and you cannot find more fertile soil, a more genial chmate, or 
 better conditions for success, when the water for irrigation which we are 
 bringing with our canals from the exhaustless and never-failing Yaqui River 
 is once upon it." 
 
 Mr. James F. Merriam, a well-known expert on land-values, says : 
 
 " This land will, when irrigated, produce in great abundance cotton, 
 limes, lemons, oranges, raisin-grapes, wheat, com, alfalfa — a noble array of 
 products. To those unfamiliar with the last named, I would say that an acre 
 of it will produce in the course of a year from six to ten tons of the alfalfa, a 
 species of clover equal in nutritive quahty to the finest English hay. 
 
' ' Twenty acres of this land in mature cultivation will amply support a 
 family of four or five persons. I believe that the tract of land as a whole will 
 abundantly support, when under cultivation, a population, roundly speaking, 
 of a hundred thousand people." 
 
 Mr. Albert E. Lott, a very capable engineer and land surveyor, who spent 
 several months on this property, says : 
 
 " I regard it as the best piece of land in Sonora, decidedly so." 
 
 Mr. Hugh T. Richards, for ten years General Manager of the Mexican 
 Division of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad system, says: 
 
 " It is a most admirable and valuable piece of property." 
 
 Mr. Walter S. Logan, in an address delivered in New York, December 
 1 6, 1891, before a distinguished body of gentlemen interested in Mexico, said : 
 
 " I have called this Sonora and Sinaloa country, the land covered by 
 Conant's concession and the theatre of his work, ' The Empire of Don 
 Carlos.' It is larger in extent than the country of Ancient Athens or Sparta, 
 as large as the old Castile of good Queen Isabella, the patroness of Columbus, 
 and larger than many of our North American States. It is as fertile as the 
 valley of the Nile, and more productive than the prairies of Illinois. Wheat 
 grows better there than in Minnesota and Dakota ; it rivals Iowa and Ne- 
 braska in Indian com ; it raises better barley than Canada, as good cotton as 
 South Carolina, tobacco equal to that of Cuba, and coffee better than Brazil ; 
 while there is no part of the United States and but few regions in the West 
 Indies which can equal it for sugar. But it is as a fruit-growing country that 
 it is to be most famous. Its neighbors on the north. Southern California and 
 Arizona, are now beginning to supply our Eastern markets with the most 
 luscious fruit ever grown in the world, and Sonora had already shown them 
 that she is no mean rival in this most profitable trade. The Hermosillo 
 oranges, grown within thirty miles of the Yaqui River and near where Don 
 Carlos was born, are unrivalled for their flavor, and bring the highest prices 
 in any market to-day to which they have access. The banana, cocoanut, the 
 pineapple, and all the tropical fruits reach a perfection here which they have 
 never attained on the Mediterranean, and the figs of Sonora are superior to 
 those of Smyrna. 
 
 Prof. George A. Treadwell, whose researches on the Pacific Coast com- 
 menced before an irrigating canal had been built during historic times in that 
 part of the world, and who is thoroughly familiar with all parts of Sonora, 
 says: 
 
 " It is the most magnificent enterprise of its kind in the world. The land 
 is fertile, the water supply unfailing, the climate genial, and all the conditions 
 of success exist in abundance." 
 
 Col. Richard J. Hinton of the United States Department of Agriculture, 
 whose reports on Irrigation have attracted so much attention both in this 
 country and in Europe, says : 
 
" I traveled over this land many years ago. I have inspected and exam- 
 ined nearly every irrigation enterprise in North America. I have never seen 
 anything superior to yours. There is no better land in the world and the cli- 
 mate is unsurpassed. You are laying the foundations of a great State." 
 
 Mr. F. H. Todd of Arizona, an eminent irrigation engineer who spent con- 
 siderable time in an examination of this property, says of it : 
 
 '•The character of the soil is one of great fertility, and will grow all of the 
 semi-tropical fruits and grasses, and, I would judge, nearly all the tropical 
 fruits. With such a system of irrigation as is now in use in the southwestern 
 part of the United States, the crops which could be produced would be simply 
 enormous. 
 
 "The soil is not only very rich, but is of almost unknown depth, being in 
 some places more than sixty feet deep. The tract of land owned by the com- 
 pany, for uniformity of soil and general character of the surface for so large 
 an area, is equalled by few, if any, tracts of land on the continent. 
 
 ' ' The climate is fine ; in winter very rarely any frost, and in summer not as 
 warm as the southwestern part of the United States. The air is very dry, thus 
 enabling fruits to be cured with no loss and without the aid of artificial heat. 
 
 "This canal project is one of great magnitude, and cannot but be an un- 
 qualified success. The water is there in sufficient quantities at the time when 
 needed to irrigate the land. There is a large body of land, of a quality 
 capable of producing nearly anj^ kind of crop. The climate is such that no 
 loss of crop need ever be had. All that is needed is to apply the water, and 
 put in and take care of the crop. Nature has done the rest. I have no hes- 
 itancy in recommending the enterprise to be a good one and the expense of 
 acquiring water in this instance is less per acre than in any other canal enter- 
 prise I have ever examined." 
 
 Hon. J. DeBarth Shorb, President of the State Board of Viticultural Com- 
 missioners of California, speaking of a very similar district in his own State, 
 says: 
 
 ' ' When I first commenced my irrigating enterprises, the income derived 
 from the San Gabriel valley, comprising two hundred square miles of terri- 
 tory, did not exceed $50,000. A greater income than that is now derived 
 from one hundred acres of carefully cultivated orchards. Then land was 
 worth not more than an average of $8 an acre ; now its value is $200 an acre 
 for lands having no water, and $500 an acre for irrigated lands. Since I came 
 East a tract of two hundred acres, without water, has been sold at a cash 
 price of $300 an acre. From these lands a revenue is derived, more than 
 sufficient to justify these prices. All this is solely the result of scientific 
 irrigation." 
 
 Mr. Herbert H. Logan, an irrigator of great experience and success in 
 Arizona, and who has traveled extensively in Mexico, says : 
 
 "This land produces every fruit grown outside of the tropics to perfection. 
 
13 
 
 The farmer can pick from his garden the peach as early as the 20th of May, 
 and all fruits develop and reach a perfection only known to a southern or 
 semi-tropical climate. What is true of the peach is true of the pear, the apri- 
 cot, the prune, the fig, the nectarine, the pomegranate, the grape, the walnut, 
 the almond, the orange, lemon, and lime. It is a land where the orange can 
 be had fresh from the tree every morning in the year, where the strawberry 
 can be grown and will produce out of doors twelve months in succession, and 
 with a climate reaching almost perfection. 
 
 "At your price, water-rights thrown in, the land is dirt cheap. If our ex- 
 perience here in Arizona is any criterion it will be worth from ten to twenty 
 times that price inside of five years." 
 
 Col. E. S. Nettleton (and in such matters he is an oracle) speaking of these 
 lands, says: 
 
 " Of the 400,000 acres of land lying below the line of the canal, there is 
 hardly a square foot which the canal will not irrigate, and it is all rich in the 
 mineral fertiHzers which form a fine soil of great fertility. 
 
 ' ' The climate, the quick and fertile soil, with a control of the moisture by 
 means of irrigation, render the Yaqui country capable of producing, two crops 
 a year. The late fall, winter, and early spring season is adapted for raising . 
 such farm products as are grown in a more northern country and colder cli- 
 mate, and the late spring, summer, and early fall season is adapted to the 
 semi-tropical and some of the tropical products. Corn planted the first of 
 March can be harvested the first of June, and the second crop can be planted 
 about July I oth and harvested the last of October; while the same ground 
 can be sown to wheat in November or December and harvested in May. 
 Beans may be planted the first of August and harvested in November and 
 December, and the second crop, planted in April, can be harvested in June. 
 Cotton grows from three to five years without re-planting. Alfalfa grows 
 throughout the whole year, and five crops can be cut, besides furnishing fine 
 pasturage throughout the fall and winter months. Many of the other products 
 of the farm can be so timed as to planting that two crops can be successfully 
 raised each year, and the market gardens can be ![so managed as to furnish 
 fresh vegetables through a large portion of the year, by planting them at 
 different intervals. 
 
 "The land produces luxuriant crops of cotton, sugar-cane, tobacco, indigo 
 plant, oranges, lemons, sweet limes, grape-fruit, dates, figs, olives, bananas, 
 grapes, pomegranates, cocoanuts, mangoes, and all like products. 
 
 " It is a fresh water deposit of alluvial soil, not much unlike that of the 
 Nile valley in Egypt, which it closely resembles in texture as well as chemi- 
 cal construction. 
 
 "I understand that some of the California people who desire to go into 
 fruit-raising have an eye on Yaqui. In California and other places where 
 the semi-tropical fruits can be raised, a man with ordinary means finds it 
 
14 
 
 impossible to get land and water on account of the high prices at which these 
 are held. These practical fruit-growers will be a valuable addition to the 
 Yaqui country, as their holdings will naturally be small and their trained 
 methods in growing and preparing fruits for the markets will be a good ob- 
 ject lesson for those to follow who are soon to engage for the first time in 
 this branch of horticultural work. There is something very enticing in the 
 business of cultivating the soil in a country where so many of the delicacies 
 and luxuries of life can be grown and disposed of at a good round profit, and 
 I believe that this alone will draw a large immigration to the Yaqui country. 
 
 "I believe that Riverside, California, can be duplicated within a very short 
 time. All you need is the right kind of people. You have everything else 
 that they have, and more too, besides bed-rock prices for the land and 
 water. 
 
 " I know that from my own State of Colorado many settlers are ready to 
 come as soon as we are ready for them. These were the pioneers that built 
 up that State, and they are a class of intelUgent, restless, energetic men, the 
 best of all pioneers, who will make a success of any country of which they 
 take hold. . . . 
 
 " Your land, and even a class of land inferior to yours, in the semi-tropical 
 cHmate in the United States, with a water-right attached, brings anywhere 
 from fifty to one thousand dollars an acre in its raw state, according to loca- 
 tion. I have never known of such a low price as you are giving being put on 
 lands in the United States with a water privilege, even in sections where only 
 the common farm products in a northern climate can be raised. . . . 
 
 " If your lands and your water -rights on the Yaqui River were in Colorado, 
 they would easily be worth thirty million dollars as they stand to-day ; and 
 I am not at all sure that they are not really more valuable in Sonora than 
 they would be in Colorado. In the one State you have the advantage of the 
 American flag, and in the other of perpetual sunshine and a growing year 
 twelve months long. The sunshine and the long growing year will always 
 remain as an advantage to Sonora. The constantly improving condition of 
 affairs in Mexico will be likely to make the question of nationality one of less 
 and less importance each succeeding year. 
 
 " During the short time which has elapsed since my return to Colorado, I 
 have talked this enterprise over with many of my old friends here. They 
 are the pioneers who have hewn a civilization out of this mountain wilder- 
 ness and made it what it is, a far Western New England, and I know that 
 many of them are willing to follow me in Sonora now as they followed me in 
 Colorado in years gone by ; and the Yaqui country is so full of attractions 
 for me, has so many possibilities and so bright a future, that although I had 
 thought that my work in reclaiming the desert here, and in helping to build 
 up the State of Colorado, had entitled me to a rest for the remainder of my 
 life, I cannot resist the temptation you put in my way, and am ready, if you 
 
15 
 
 wish it, to lead my old comrades and co-workers into the land of the Yaqui 
 as I did years gone by in the Valley of the Platte and the Cache la Poudre, 
 and try to found for them and for you a new Greeley in a land where there 
 is no winter, and where flowers bloom and crops grow alike in January 
 and in June." 
 
 ^^—"■^^<^M 
 
 .< 
 
 \3 
 
 • a. 
 
^8g4- 
 
 WALTER S. LOGAN, 
 
 ^res. Sonora and Sinai oa Irrigation Co., 
 ^8 Willia-m Street, J\[ew York. 
 
 (Dear Sir : 
 
 I hereby subscribe for shares of the new 
 
 Land= Convertible Stock of the Sonora and Sinaloa 
 Irrigation Company at ^6 per share, in accordance 
 with the terins of your circtdar of May 24th, i8g4. 
 
 Yours truly. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 015 829 701 2 .