Tucson became the head-quarters of vice, dissipation, and crime. It was probably the nearest approach to Pandemonium on the North American Continent. Murderers, thieves, cutthroats, and gamblers formed the mass of the population. Every man went armed to the teeth, and scenes of bloodshed were of every-day occurrence in the public streets. There was neither government, law, nor military protection. The garrison at Tucson confined itself to its legitimate business of getting drunk or doing nothing. Arizona was perhaps the only part of the world under the protecting aegis of a civilized government in which every man administered justice to suit himself, and where all assumed the right to gratify the basest passions of their nature without restraint. It was literally a paradise of devils.
- From Adventures in the Apache Country: A Tour Through Arizona and Sonora with Notes on the Silver Regions of Nevada by John Ross Browne [New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1871.]
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