The marvellous country, or, Three years in Arizona and New Mexico.: Containing an authentic history of this wonderful country and its ancient civilization ... together with a full and complete history of the Apache tribe of Indians .../ By Samuel Woodworth Cozzens. Illustrated by more than one hundred engravings.

ABBi9 DOMENECH'S OBSERVATIONS.
In speaking of the former population of New Mexico
and Arizona, the Abbe Domenech observes: "When New
Mexico was discovered, the country extending from the
Pacific oii the one side to the Rio Grande on the other, was
b)ut a succession of towns, villages, and habitations, joined
together by cultivated fields, orchards, and roads. But the
great multitude of human beings have almost disappeared
since the conquest. The silence of the wilderness has
succeeded to the joyful songs of the extinct population,
and the aridity of the desert replaces the fertility of the
soil. Wormwood and artemisia now grow where fields
of rose-trees and Indian corn formerly flourished. The
cactus, mesquit, and the dwarf cedar vegetate on the remnant of the pine and fruit trees, reduced to powder by
constant droughts. The sun darts its perpendicular and
scorching rays on the arid and barren rocks, which sparkle
by day like gigantic diamonds. All the smiling nature, so
lovely in by-g(ine days, has retained nothing of its former
glory but a melancholy beauty, not unlike the sickly hues
of a flower washed by the waves of the sea."
He also estimates the population residing between the
thirty-fourth and thirty-sixth degrees N. lat., and extending
from the Canadian River through to the Gulf of California,
to be at least one hundred and forty-nine thousand souls, as
late as 1856. This estimate is generally believed to be
largely in excess of the actual population, though less than
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