Arizona Silver Belt, April 6, 1889

The Century Magazine for March contains an illustrated article entitled “A Scout with Buffalo Soldiers,” by Fredric Remington, descriptive of a trip with a scouting party from Camp Grant, via [Fort] Thomas and San Carlos, to the summit of Pinal Mountain, during the summer of 1888. [Remington’s article appeared in the magazine’s April 1889 edition.] It is a somewhat overdrawn picture of the desolateness of the country and the hardships of soldiering in Arizona, and is rather tame reading to a person familiar with the country traversed. However, it will doubtless entertain the average Eastern reader, and serve to perpetuate the erronious [sic] impression entertained of Arizona in the States. The ascent of the Pinals seems to have been the pleasantest experience of “the long and laborious” journey, and is thus described: “By another long climb we reached the extreme peaks of the Pinal range, and there before us was spread a view which was grand enough to compensate us for the labor. Beginning in ‘gray reds,’ range after range of mountains, overlapping each other, grow purple and finally lose themselves in pale blue.”