The total population of the Great American Desert in 1910 was about 2,750,000 people. Of this total population in the United States, 500,000 are in southern California, leaving about one person to every two square miles in the re mainder of the territory. Of the remaining people in the American portion of the desert, at least four-fifths are in cities, towns and min ing camps. These people in their own pictur esque language are by profession unesters,P ulungers,* ((Mexicans)) and °promoters?) In plainer Eng lish, mineral seekers, cattle men, irrigator-farm ers, miners, health-seeking consumptives, labor ing Indians who have abandoned the ((blanket)) caste, and men who serve as intermediaries be tween the latent wealth of the desert and the ready cash of the East. As a whole they are an energetic lot. In the United States they consist chiefly of two classes, the Caucasian, whose ingenious brain conceives and develops industries, and the Mexican (Indian) peasant, who does most of the manual labor. Across the line in Mexico the same conditions exist, ex cept that the American finds a ready co-oper ator and companion in the higher caste of Mexican citizens. If any of our readers should still retain in his mind as a type of the desert citizen the bad man with the slouched hat, flow ing mustaches and quick-acting revolver, he is at least ten years behind the times.
The aboriginal population of the Great American Desert was and is of quite a different type from that of the nomadic savage who lived by the chase, in the forested mountains and upon the Great Plains. They were largely vil lage dwellers, home builders and agriculturists who by the arts of pottery and weaving had risen to the cultured stage of barbarism as dis tinguished from savagery. It was their social arts and habits of industry which produced the highest aboriginal type in the ancient Aztec, and it is their blood (not the Spanish) which to-day constitutes the ruling spirit of Mexico.
Upon the invasion of their environment, first by the Spanish and later by the Anglo-American civilization, they assumed at least a portion of these and to-day they are the people whd con stitute almost the sole laboring classes of the desert, being called Mexicans in the United States and eons or peasants in Mexico.
It is the intensity rather than the density of the desert population that appeals to the ob server. Whatever is done is done better than elsewhere. This is a necessity of the desert condition. It will not pay in that region to trifle with inferior methods or products. In mining the best man and the best machine must be had; in fanning with expensive water it is a waste to plant poor seed; if cattle are placed on the range they must be good cattle, and so on throughout the entire gamut of industry. The desert cities, if not as densely populous as those of some regions, are unique in their thrift and prosperity. They are all picturesque communities, presenting an interesting mixture of architectural, social and business conditions, busy with commerce and buoyant with hopes and prospects. Each desert city is thoroughly alive to municipal improvement and develop ment. Electric lights and street cars, water works, schools, churches and public libraries abound, while many of the American towns have copied from their Mexican neighbors the picturesque plazas or ornate public parks within the central portions of the busy cities. In many of the Mexican desert cities may be seen the union of all the best of modern industrial im provement with the picturesque Spanish archi tectural features for which these places are noted. Steam and electricity have asserted their mastery, but have concealed their cold mecha nism behind the prettily stuccoed and flower entwined walls of the artistic Mexican type.