An incident illustrating the great antiquity of prehistoric man in Arizona, is the following:  In digging a well on the desert north of Phoenix, at the depth of 115 feet from the surface a stone mortar, such as the ancients used, was found standing upright, and in it was found a stone pestle, showing the mortar had not been carried there by any underground current of water, and that it had not been disturbed from the position in which its ancient owner had left it with the pestle in it.  There is only one way to account for this mortar and pestle.  They had originally been left on what was at that time the surface of the ground, and the slow wash from the mountains had gradually, during unknown ages, raised the surface for miles on every side to the extent of 115 feet.

The question is often asked, Will this hieroglyphic writing ever be deciphered?  The authors of the most ancient hieroglyphic writings or markings seem to have had well-defined forms or marks, which were in common use for this class of writing.  Is it not most reasonable that a race so far advanced in other ways would have perfected a method of transmitting by marks of some kind their records to those who might come after them?  Again, where so much system is shown in the use of symbols, it may be presumed that the same mark, wherever used in the same position, carries with it a fixed meaning, alike at all times.  Having such a settled system of marks, there must be a key to the thoughts concealed in writing, and quite likely the key for deciphering these hieroglyphics will sometime be found on one of the yet undiscovered hieroglyphic rocks in the high mountains or in the mounds not yet examined.  On the other hand, there can be no key to the inferior class of pictographs made by the people who came after the mound, canal and city builders had disappeared, for the crudely marked forms of reptiles, animals or similar things had a meaning, if any, varying with each individual maker.

Who were these people who formed a great nation here in the obscurity of the remote past?  Were they the ancient Phoenicians, who were not only a maritime but a colonizing nation, and who, in their well-manned ships, might have found their way to the southern coast of America ages since, and from thence journeyed north?  Or were they some of the followers of Votan or Zamna, who had wandered north and founded a colony of the Aztecs?  Whoever these people were, and whichever way they came from, the evidences of the great works they left behind them give ample proof that they were superior and different from other races around them, and these particular people may have been the “bearded white men,” whom the Indians had traditions of when Coronado’s followers first came through the Gila and Salt River valleys in 1526.

CHAPTER XIX.

OUR GREAT WATERWAYS

Importance of Rivers to Commerce a Generation Ago—­The Ideal River Man—­The Great Mississippi River and Its Importance to Our Native Land—­The Treacherous Missouri—­A First Mate Who Found a Cook’s Disguise Very Convenient—­How a Second Mate Got Over the Inconvenience of Temporary Financial Embarrassment.