Show the old settler my dear san Jua ners before any one haj had set a post r turned a furrow where mon cicello stands I 1 crossed over the grassy hills there and it was not j different to the country in all directions ions before the first stake j was driven to mark what was to be blanding I 1 prospected the place carefully and found it no different to many other places in the county good farms and homes have been made where we wa i used to ride af after ter wild horses and cattle and by virtue of this half century of experience I 1 maintain that there is in the county many places where homes and towns will wiil be built as soon as a man or men come along with to detect and appreciate tle the possibilities ties having been in san juan from infancy having spent the formative period of my life there it is interwoven with and has become an inseparable part of my philosophy I 1 believe in it with the same uncompromising intuition that I 1 believe in myself in life in in the pot ncy and the outcome of the race I 1 have seen its waste places become fruitful f v and I 1 know what has happened can and will happen again san juan was once a populous region less than a a thousand years ago it supported homes and villages where modern man has not yet had faith and f foresight ore sight to break the soil the colloidal wealth of ancient fertility is still in in the soil and natural places for homes and towns are waiting for men to come again when war or famine or despotism on the outside drives men to seek refuge in san juan and dig their liali hood from its red loam it will yield to them in all kindness what happened at monticello and at blanding will happen all around our mountains up and lown down our canyons and in many a wild sage brush stretch and the country will itself bear anchal len gable testimony of what it h has inspired through the years in t the ae hearts of its appreciative children albert R lyman 0 |