Verde Valley

ture over the nearly done chili, spoon fat over it until it's done, and serve with chili sauce which you've heated first.

Remove, drain off grease thoroughly, add hot filling, and cover with shredded lettuce, carrots, radishes, etc. A little hot chili sauce added after stuffing the "sandwich" improves the flavor, makes it messier to eat.

Guacamole (Avocado Salad)

Mash together 2 ripe avocados, 1 tablespoon green chili sauce, salt, and lemon juice; serve on lettuce. Seedless grapes are sometimes added to the mashed mixture.

Delicious on tostados as a canape!

Chili Relleno

A good one is the chili stuffed with cheese. Prepare the fresh green chile by removing skin. Cut off the tip (not the stem), and stuff with a strip of cheese.

To prepare your egg mixture (one egg for each chili), first separate, and beat the whites until very, very stiff; add a little flour to the beaten whites. Beat the yolks, and add to the whites. Dip a stuffed chili in the egg mixture, fry in a skillet half filled with hot grease (chilis will float so you'll have to turn them). Now spoon out the remaining egg mix-

Huevos Rancheros

Figure 1 green (fresh skinned) chili and 2 fresh peeled ripe tomatoes to a serving of 2 eggs. Salt the chili and tomatoes, and mix together thoroughly with your hands for best results, or use a potato masher if you're dainty. Anyway, squash together well.

Fry some diced onion and a little mixed garlic in bacon fat, heat thoroughly as many eggs as you've planned for, adding a tablespoon of cream for each egg. Start cooking the chili and tomato mixture, then add the eggs, and scramble all together, and serve with a heated chili sauce.

La Olla Podrida

This is not Irish stew with chili pepper added. It's a twin brother of a meat pie. Start off with half a pound each of left-over cooked pork, chicken, veal, and beef, or any combination of these. Add ¼ teaspoon each of cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and cloves, a dash of celery seed. Mix well. Line a greased baking pan with plain pastry, fill with mixture, top with pastry. Bake in a hot oven for about 10 minutes; reduce heat to very slow and bake for an hour. If you like, add a wine glass of sherry under the pastry just before serving.

Polle En Mole

Everyone raves about Mexican "chicken with chocolate sauce" as if no Norte Americano were smart enough to prePrepare it. To fool them, cut up a chicken-any variety-and stew until tender. A Mexican cook never adds any seasoning until a chicken has boiled or cooked 15 minutes.

Fry in hot butter a minced onion, a minced clove of garlic, half a cup of sesame seeds, 12 slivered almonds. Toast a piece of bread quite brown, break into small pieces, add to the skillet. Now mix thoroughly 1/3 cup chili paste, a pinch of anise seed and a ground cloves and cinnamon. Add a tablespoon of raisins. Put into the onion and other stuff in the skillet, add enough broth to keep to a thick gravy consistency. (Take the broth out of the boiling chicken). Now shave into this one square of unsweetened chocolate. When it has melted, arrange the hot stewed chicken on a hot platter, pour the sauce over the chicken, and proclaim that you, too, can prepare Mexico's famed polle en mole.

Pollo Con Arroz

For pollo con arroz (chicken with rice) clean and cut a chicken of any size as though your intention is to fry it. Now cover with boiling water. Boil for fifteen minutes before adding salt-a tablespoonful. Mexican cooks advise boiling or cooking chicken fifteen minutes before any seasoning is used.

After salting it, boil the chicken until, regardless of its age or size, the meat is tender. Just before it becomes really tender get out your heavy skillet and heat in it three tablespoons of fat. Fry in this a chopped onion, a clove of minced garlic. Now stir in a cup of uncooked rice. Do not brown the rice-just mix it well with the fat and onion, and add the rice mixture to the boiling chicken and cook until the rice is done. Before removing from the fire, add a pinch of saffron, and stir in well. Drain off any remaining water, and serve chicken and rice, or pollo con arroz, and wait for calls for encores.

If you try some of these unusual taste treats, you'll understand the popularity of Mexican cooking throughout the Southwest. You'll want to try combinations of familiar foods with exotic flavors-and there's a charming Mexican Cookbook to help you. This is written by an expert, Erna Ferguson, with style as well as accuracy, and can be secured from the University of New Mexico Press, in Albuquerque.

Our Mexican neighbors have spent hundreds of years perfecting the art of blending delicate flavors brought home with them from world travels and European educations. And when it comes to using their own unique contribution to the international family of spices, they're the first to tell you that if you that when you use chilis for cooking with a Mexican accent, be sure to "take eet easy."

VERDE Valley BY ALLEN C. REED

She's quite a character, the Verde . . . with moods by the milefull. She'll pon-der for a few hundred yards in deep meditation, burst forth in a gay spurt of foam and spray, splashing through the shallows, swirling down the narrows, splitting at a sand bar, racing herself to the other end and running her fingers through the tall grass and willows of a half submerged island only to pause again, catch her breath and lag along in another deep quiet pond. She's a pawn of a polygenetic personality . . . a blend of countless trickles from a million hills that nourish the rivu-lets and a score of streams which in turn give the life flow to the Verde. Her waters from summer showers and winter snows roam 6,550 square miles from cool pine-clad mountain country to rocky desert hills before they gather in the valleys and the canyons seeking their level and their bed in the Verde.

It may well be the variety of waters flowing through her

COLOR DATA

"PEACEFUL VALLEY" right. It was a great temptation to pull for shore every few yards to climb the hills and cliffs for photos of the beautiful Verde Valley. It's pretty hard to take a very bad picture when nature supplies such props.

"VERDE EVENING" center spread. As anywhere in the great out-of-doors, the most peaceful, serene time of day in the Verde Valley was just about sundown when the shadows began to stretch and yawn in anticipation of the approaching deep and restful night. Ektachrome 4 x 5, 1/25th, f8.

"SUN ON THE RIVER" last picture. This part of the Verde Valley where there are fewer cliffs is typical of the country which at one time supported a large Indian population living in hilltop pueblos. Ektachrome 4 x 5, 1/5th, f32.

A river of many moods, the Verde is sometimes fast and frolicsome, and there are times when she'll insist you get out and walk.

Her veins that provide the heritage of her many-sided personality. Her quiet side might stem from the easy grace of Sycamore Creek in its enchanted meadow-floored canyon. Her flair for showmanship might spawn where Oak Creek plays a starring role on nature's stage before a magnificent canyon backdrop of varicolored cliffs. The occasional zip and tang of her sparkling wit might flow from the cold, clear waters of the high timber country, a contribution of the East Verde. Her other countless little quirks and ways might come from the many smaller streams and part-time streams and desert drywashes that channel sudden showers into the pattern of her byway. With such a diverse heritage there is little wonder that her moods range from impish tricks to deep dignified meditation. She has a mind of her own and she has had two or three million years in which to make it up: since the Pliocene Age when a great lake 25 miles long and 13 miles wide cut through the lava dike at its lower end below the Black Mountains and allowed its waters to carve the Verde Valley. Through the limestone deposit in the ancient lake bed and on south through volcanic rock, schist, granite, and conglomerate to where she meets the Salt River, the Verde picks her way in a serpentine of lush green foliage giving life and color to an otherwise semiarid valley.

thousand years ago, she was a good host to them: the Sinagua. They were industrious sedentary Indians who farmed her fertile terraces and lived for many generations by her side and later in communal dwellings or pueblos constructed of timber, rock and mud, on hilltops and in the cliffs. By 1500 the early inhabitants were driven from the valley perhaps because of both the exhaustion of the overfarmed soil and the harrassment from the early Yavapais and Apaches. There is hardly a prominent hilltop or a side canyon in the Verde country today that does not bear some evidence of this erstwhile civilization. A crumbling wall, a lone standing centerpost, fragments of pottery, corn grinding stones, chips of flint and arrowheads... little remnants of an ancient past where they were scattered hundreds of years before the American Continent was even a dream to the most imaginative white man. The Verde is an extrovert throughout her upper valley where she frolics with Arizona summer guests as they splash about in her pleasant swimming holes or angle for catfish and bass. She visits man's farm lands and passes by his towns perched on her banks and she babbles beneath his bridges. But farther down she has another side. As though tiring of civilization she becomes a recluse and plunges into a valley where there are no roads, no farms to irrigate and very little sign of modern man. Here her friends are the deer that come

When man first came to live on her banks over a

One moment she'll worm into your confidence with gentle serenity and next, she'll wrestle you mountain-style, no holds barred. she'll give you catfish as long as your arm.. show you petroglyph records of a bygone age and leagues of scenic splendor.

She taught us a lot that first day. She reprimanded us for foolishly packing some of our supplies in corrugated cardboard boxes by turning them into useless wads of soggy pulp. Her sense of humor showed itself again when we opened the burlap sacks containing our canned goods to find that she had cleverly removed the labels and deposited them helter-skelter throughout the bag in little wet lumps. For nine days she would have had a merry laugh at our Shake and guess method of determining unlabeled can contents and our pork-and-bean-surprises for dessert. But we were beginning to catch on to her pranks, carefully we matched the right label to fragments remaining on each can, making notes of the contents and the code number stamped in the top.

As we anticipated, it was quite necessary to have a complete change of clothing . . . not for, if we got into camp wet, but for when. If we hadn't been out in the water for a spell and were a little dry she would playfully leap into the raft at every opportunity. Long trousers were a must to avoid severe sunburn on wet legs. Tennis shoes were equally important as they are a big help when it is necessary to walk the raft through the shallows. They dry out faster than leather shoes, and boots would be too hot and cumbersome. Air mattresses inflated and placed on the bottoms of each raft under the load of gear helped protect the fabric from being cut when it scraped or slammed into submerged boulders. Each day she taught us a little more and unfolded before our eyes many canyons and ruins to explore.

In her playful moods one of her favorite tricks was to sweep the raft into a swift channel close along the bank where thick brush and tree branches extended out over the water close to the surface. This always necessitated a furious struggle with the paddles to avoid smashing a passageway through the tangle or being roughly scraped overboard into the swift water . . . both methods we tried. She had an Arizona pre-700 to about 1400 A. D. This dwelling was occupied mainly in the first half of the 1300's with some evidence of occupancy before 1150 A. D. Because only authorized scientific expeditions are permitted to excavate in ruins we limited our explorations in each case to the surface. However around ruins and on siopes below arrowheads are often exposed by erosion.

added cute trick of watching for a chance to dump about a yard of sand and gravel into the raft which she had deposited in overhanging branches during high water, probably for just such an occasion.

As days passed by it was obvious, due to the change in plant species around us, that we were touching on different phases of a climate zone. Perhaps the most noticeable of all signs were the giant saguaro cactus a few of which appeared like scouts around the fifth day and then as we progressed, seemed to come from the desert hills to stand by the thousands in great clusters to see the strange intruders drift by. In this lower country it was very essential that we be on the alert for rattlesnakes, especially after dusk when they are more likely to be about and harder to see. Unfortunately they do not always choose to give warning. After encountering several in the cliffs and around the banks we were quite cautious and the closest call came when one member of the party, hurrying to photograph another landing a large catfish, passed unsuspectingly close to a knee high ledge only to have one of these ancient, Indian rainmakers snag its fangs in the folds of his levis. Fortunately, with two days river travel yet to go, it was but a near miss and we weren't called upon to get out the snake-bite kit.

Such mild pastoral views as the tourist has of the Verde when he crosses it on U. S. Alternate Highway 89 at Bridge-port, or when he might on occasion see it completely dry at its headwaters north of Prescott on U. S. 89 are quite deceiving as to her true nature. She has plenty of spirit and spunk, an average flow over a 37 year period of 686 cubic feet per second at her mouth and an average drop from Camp Verde to Horseshoe Dam of 21 feet per mile. Still she's no challenge to a riverman, for all her so-called rapids stacked together would hardly make one good rapid for the Colorado River.

Mainly she's a passageway into the back country. Like all rivers she varies with the seasons and can put on quite a show at times if the logs and other drift deposited on boulders and ledges 8 to 10 feet above her usual surface are any evidence.

If one uses common sense she'll take him through with little difficulty, but he mustn't grow careless for a few thousand gallons of water dropping down a narrow boulder filled grade can muster up a lot of power. Though she played a little rough with us at times she always provided a picture-book picnic campsite, she supplemented our diet with delicious catfish steaks, wild honey, and wild dove, which were in season. She quenched our thirst and carried our loads by day and lulled us to sleep on her banks at night. She lured many wild animals to her edge and took us by so softly that only at the last moment did they leave. She had a right to a little fun at our expense.

Yes, she's quite a character the Verde, and traveling her was like traveling a character line etched deeply in the venerable face of Arizona.

To hot, dusty, thirsty hikers . . . a waterhole is a welcome reward . . . and the master map is a real puzzler and corroborative evidence exists for one to doubt that fact.

TREK FOR GOLD - Continued from page three.

By noon we had reached the Peralta master map carved on a rock bluff in needle canyon, but like others before us, our efforts to decipher it were in vain. We made comparisons with the map we were carrying and puzzled over them both as we ate our lunch. The rest of the day we continued our exploration of the mountain's inner-sanctum, home of the ancient thunder gods of the Apache. We well knew that men far better equipped than we had devoted entire life times to the search in that vast and defiant mystery domain. So by nightfall we were in no way disillusioned when we arrived empty handed at our supplies and bedrolls at the pre-arranged location by a cool clear water hole below the tall sombrero-like stone mountain called Weavers Needle, prominent landmark in the Superstitions.

We had walked, climbed, and crawled an estimated twenty-eight miles on our first day. It is doubtful if any of us had ever traveled so far on foot in one day in such rough ter-rane before and it is equally doubtful if any of us had ever enjoyed a more tasty and welcome meal than we made of the thick, campfire grilled steaks, beans, rolls, canned fruit, and coffee.

It was a well fed, pleasantly tired bunch who lolled about the campfire 'till past tweleve that night swapping yarns and listening to our guides tell the legend of the Lost Dutchman Mine. Of how in 1846 Pedro Peralta of Mexico had discovered a fabulous motherload of gold-bearing quartz in the mountain. How he had brought on his second trip 68 men and 200 mules to work a series of eight rich mines, only to be massacred by resentful Apaches a year later but not before they had managed to cache the treasure of their year's work and carve a master map of the mine and treasure locations on the face of a solid rock bluff. The Indians having no interest in the gold itself and wanting to keep the strange intruders out of their sacred mountains, covered up all the workings but one considered too remote and removed all traces of mining activity. We talked about Jacob Walz the Dutchman who according to history twenty-three years later rediscov-