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accepted phrase to speak of themselves as outside the
world, while going to California, or anywhere, was
called “ going zzséde.” Even with government trans-
portation which we had, climate and natural obstacles
had to remain unchanged, while with the ordinary
means, travel was a perfect nightmare of fatigue,
discomforts and some dangers. ,

From Yuma, where the railway travel ended, the
distance to Prescott was only about two hundred and

 

GEN. FREMONT, EX-GOV. OF ARIZONA,

thirty miles (what we make in a morning between
New York and Washington), which the mail stage
made in forty-eight hours—more or less. This
“mail stage ” was an open buckboard with two horses.
On this were piled passengers, express matter and
mails, and night or day no stop was made except for
meals and to change horses, and, quite often, to be
robbed. This seemed to be accepted without resist-
ance; few men would not prefer giving up their
money rather than their lives. And to be wounded
was terrible, where not a village or settlement, not
even a real farm broke the solitude.

We were eight days on our way, but the experi-
ence that governed all preparations for. the little
journey gave us the luxury of comfort for such travel.
We averaged only thirty miles a day, but this was good
travelling for mules which had to make the whole
djistance unchanged and return immediately to Yuma,
And the variation of temperature and air as we rode

MY ARIZONA CLASS.

from the low level of Yuma, and its one hundred
degrees to one hundred and thirty degrees of heat to
the six thousand feet and keen, thin, cold air of Pres-
cott, told on animals as well as people. There were
camp fires and lots of blankets, and I had a tent and
the cushions of the ambulance, but one does not linger
on such beds.

Each morning we had had tea, everything was
repacked, and our three ambulances ready for the word
to start, which was given at six.

It was a most interesting bit of travel, such as there
can be no need to make again, and I am sure you
would like to hear, and I should like to tell you of it,
but when would we get to school ?

You cannot do justice to this school unless you

‘realize somewhat what made it so worthy of each

one’s best aid. To you, schools, with all their
belongings — buildings, teachers, scholars — come in
the natural order of things, pretty much as the sea-
sons and their belongings, but here where the weary
work of emigration was followed by settlement in the
midst of warlike Indians, where their nearest town
was Los Angeles, in California, five hundred desert
miles away ; where every necessity for work and com-
fort, from a steam engine to a lemon, had to be hauled
in wagons with mule teams over these hot and almost
waterless lands—it was against these depressing
influences that the Arizona settlers built up this
really fine public school. Beginning with one room
and six scholars, in five years it had reached its pres-
ent assured and excellent condition.

The building is not a thing of beauty. You would
not hang a picture of it where the eye would be
refreshed by its graceful proportions and the mind
stirred by classic memories belonging with it, but no
monument of Roman days represents Victory more
truly than does this homely, square-set brick building;
victory won by patient and brave women as well as by
the men whose dangers of emigration and early settle-
ment they shared.

We thought it most admirable that a young com-
munity with many uses for all its money should give
so largely for education. In its solid walls and com-
plete “outfit” (I like that expressive frontier-term)
this school would do honor to any of our larger towns.
We lived near by, and it was a recurring morning
pleasure as the bell rang out from its belfry to look
over towards the fort, and there, with military punctu-
ality, was sure to appear coming over the rolling
ground the four-mule “school-ambulance,” with its