DESERT RECOLLECTIONS
Of the flora and fauna of the Painted Desert Region I have made no
study. That they are fascinating the works of Hart Merriam, Coville,
Lemmon, Hough, and others of later days, and of the specialists of
the earlier government surveys, abundantly testify. There are cacti
of varieties into the hundreds, sagebrush, black and white grama,
bunch grass, salt grass, hackberry, buck-brush, pines, junipers,
spruces, cottonwoods, and willows, besides a thousand flowering plants.
There are lizards, swifts, rattlesnakes, scorpions, Gila monsters,
vinegerones, prairie dogs, hedgehogs, turtles, squirrels, cottontail
and jack-rabbits, antelope, deer, mountain sheep, wildcats, and some
bear.
It is more of its physiographic conditions in a general way, however,
that I would here write.
Most people's conception of a desert is a flat, level place of
nothing but sand. It is sand instead of water; a desert instead of
an ocean. Few deserts conform to this conception,--none, indeed,
that I know of in the boundaries of the United States. This Painted
Desert Region is wonderfully diversified. There is sand, of course,
but much rock, many trees, more canyons, some mountains and lava
flows, extinct volcanoes, forests, and pastures. The Grand Canyon runs
across its northern borders, and it is the vampire river that flows
in that never-to-be-described water-way that drains away the water
which leaves this the desert region it is; for the Colorado has many
tributaries, and tributaries of tributaries,--the Little Colorado,
Havasu (Cataract) Creek, Canyon Padre, Canyon Diablo, Walnut Creek, Oak
Creek, Willow Creek, Diamond Creek, and a score or hundred others.
Its great mountains are the San Francisco range, on the shoulders
of which Flagstaff is located, Mount San Mateo, seen from the Santa
Fé train near Grants in New Mexico, and Williams Mountain, west of
Flagstaff, at the foot of which the railway traveller will see the town
of Williams.
Near Flagstaff are a number of extinct volcanoes and great masses of
lava flow; from the train at Blue Water to the right a few miles one
may see the crater Tintaro--the Inkstand. The Zuni Mountains have many
craters, chief of which is the Agua Fria crater, and lava flows from
the Zuni Mountains and Mount San Mateo meet in the valley, and one
rides alongside them for miles coming west beyond Laguna.
South of Canyon Diablo is a wonderful meteoritic mountain, the
explanation of whose existence the scientists have not yet determined.
From Peach Springs a large meteoric rock was sent to the Smithsonian,
and I have one dug out of a hole of its own making in the Zuni
Mountains, both of which weigh upwards of a ton.
To the east of the Canyon Diablo Mountain is Sunset Pass, familiar
to the readers of Gen. Charles King's thrilling Arizona stories, and
beyond it to the south are Hell's Canyon,--which does not belie its
name,--the Verdi Valley, and the interesting Red Rock Country, where
numerous cliff and cavate dwellings have recently been discovered and
explored by Dr. Fewkes.
Indeed, this whole region is one of cliff and cavate and other
forsaken dwellings. Everywhere one meets with them. Desert mounds, on
examination, prove to be sites of long-buried cities, and hundreds, nay
thousands of exquisite vessels of clay, decorated in long-forgotten
ways, have been dug up from them and sent to grace the shelves of
museums and speak of a people long since crumbled to dust.
The miner has found it a profitable field for his operations, the
Jerome and Congress, with the Old Vulture and similar mines, having
made great fortunes for their owners. More than half our knowledge of
the country came primarily from the daring and courageous prospectors
who risked its dangers and deaths in their search for gold.
The roads in the Painted Desert are long and tedious, and the horses
drag their weary way over the scorching sands, the wheels of the wagon
sinking in, as does also the heart of the sensitive rider who sees the
efforts the poor beasts are making to obey his will. Yet the animals
seldom sweat. Such is the rapid radiation of moisture in this dry, high
atmosphere that one never sees any of the sweat and lather so common to
hard-driven horses in lower altitude.
The food question for horses is often serious if one goes far from the
beaten path of traders or Indians. A desert is not a pasture, though
its scant patches of grass often have to serve for one. The general
custom, where possible, is to carry a small amount of grain, which is
fed sparingly night and morning. The horses are hobbled and turned
loose in as good pasture as can be found. Hence the first questions
asked when determining a camping place are, "What kind of pasture
and water does it possess?" There are times when one dare not run the
risk of turning the horses loose. Thirsty beyond endurance, they will
often travel all night, even though closely hobbled, back to where the
last water was secured. Then they must be tracked back, and no more
exhausting and disheartening occupation do I know than this.
On one occasion we were compelled to camp where there was little
pasturage. It rained, and there were two ladies in my party. The
covered wagon was emptied and their blankets rolled down in it, so that
they could be in shelter. Our driver was a German named Hank. Two of
"his horses were mules," and these were tied one to each of the front
wheels. The two real horses were tied to the rear wheels. During the
night "Pete," one of the mules, got his fore legs over the pole of
the wagon, and began to tug and pull so that the ladies were afraid
the vehicle might be overturned. Calling to Hank, the poor fellow was
compelled to get out of his blankets and in the rain go to Pete's
rescue. To their intense amusement the ladies heard him remonstrating
with the refractory mule, and almost exploded when he wound up his
remonstrances, hitherto couched in quiet and dignified language, "Pete,
you are von little tefel."
Some people do not like to hobble a horse, and so they picket him.
There are different ways of "picketing" a horse. He may be tied by the
halter to a bush, tree, wagon, or stake driven into the ground. But
these methods are fraught with danger. I once had a valuable horse
at a time when Dr. Joseph LeConte, the beloved professor of geology
of the University of California, was spending a month with me in the
mountains. We had six horses, and all were "picketed" from the halter,
or a rope around the neck. Three times a day we changed them to fresh
pasturage. At one of the changing times we found the beautiful black
stretched out cold and stiff. In scratching his head the hoof of his
hind foot had caught in the rope, and in seeking to free himself he had
pulled the rope tighter and tighter until he had strangled himself. The
gentle-hearted professor sat down and wept at the tragic end of the
noble horse "Duke" he had already learned to love.
To prevent this danger I have often picketed a horse's hind foot to a
log heavy enough to drag, so that the hungry animal could move a little
in search of food, but not run or get far away. There have been two
or three times, however, in my experience, where I could find neither
tree, bush, nor stake. Not a rock or log could be found for miles to
which the saddle horse I rode could be picketed. What then could I do?
Sit up all night to care for my horse? Ride all night? Or do as I heard
of one or two men having done, viz., picket the horse to my own foot? I
once heard of a man who was dragged to his death that way. His cayuse
was startled during the night and started to run. As the rope tightened
and he dragged the unhappy wretch attached to him, his fear increased
his speed, and not until he was exhausted and breathless did he stop in
his wild, mad race. He was found with the corpse, bruised and mangled
beyond all recognition, still dragging at the end of the rope.
I had no desire to run such risk. So I did the impossible,--picketed my
horse to a hole in the ground.
"Nonsense! Picket a horse to a hole in the ground? It can't be done!"
Indeed! But I did it. Watch me. Cut into the ground (especially if it
is a little grassy) and make a hole a little larger than to allow your
full fist to enter. As you dig deeper widen the hole below so that it
is a kind of a chimney towards the top. Dig fully a foot or a foot and
a half down. Then take the rope, which is already fastened at the other
end to your horse, wrap the end around a piece of grass, or paper, or
a small stone, or anything; put the knot into the hole, and "tamp" in
the earth as vigorously as you can. Your horse is then fast, unless he
grows desperately afraid and pulls with more than ordinary vigor.
The scarcity of water makes journeying on the Painted Desert a grave
and serious problem. The springs are few and far between, and only in
the rainy season can one rely upon stony or clay pockets that fill up
with the precious fluid. In going from Canyon Diablo to Oraibi there
are four places where water may be obtained. First in a small canyon a
few miles west of Volz's Crossing of the Little Colorado; then at the
Lakes,--small ponds of dirty, stagnant water, where a trading-post is
located and where the journey is generally broken for a night. Next
day, twenty-two miles must be driven to Little Burro Spring before
water is again found, and a few miles further on, on the opposite
side of the valley, is Big Burro Spring. Then no more water is found
until Oraibi is reached. There are two springs on the western side of
the Oraibi mesa, and three miles on the eastern side in the Oraibi
Wash is a good well, some sixty feet deep, of cold and good but not
over-clear water. There are small pools near Mashonganavi, Shipauluvi,
and Shungopavi, but the water is poor at best and very limited in
quantity to those who are used to the illimitable flow of ordinary
Eastern cities. The whole water supply at Mashonganavi, which is by far
the best watered town of the middle mesa, would not more than suffice
for the needs of a New York or Boston family of six or eight persons,
and consternation would sit upon the face of the mistress of either
household if such water were to flow through the faucets of her home.
At Walpi there are three pool springs on the west side, but all flow
slowly. One is good (for the desert), another is fair, and the third is
horrible. Yet this last is almost equal to the supply on the eastern
side, where there are three pool springs, only two of which can be used
for domestic purposes.
Storms fearful and terrible often sweep across this desert region. I
have "enjoyed" several notable experiences in them, storms of sand, of
rain, of wind, of lightning, and of thunder, sometimes one kind alone,
other times of a combination of kinds. At one time we were camped in
the Oraibi Wash not far from the home of the Mennonite missionary,
my friend Rev. H. R. Voth. There were seven of us in my party,--five
men, two women. Our general custom on making a camp was first of all
to choose the best place for the beds of the ladies, and then the men
arranged their blankets in picturesque irregularity around them at
some distance away, thus forming a complete guard, not because of any
necessity, but to make the ladies feel less timid. As my daughter was
one of the ladies, I invariably rolled out my blankets near enough to
be called readily should there be any occasion during the night.
We had not been in our blankets long, that night, before a fearful
thunder and rain-storm burst upon us. We had all gone to bed tired
after our long and weary day watching the Hopi ceremonies, and the camp
equipage was not prepared for a storm. It was pitch dark except for the
sharp flashes of lightning which occasionally cut the blackness into
jagged sections, and the deluge of rain waited for no squeamishness on
my part. Hastily jumping up, I ran to and fro in my bare feet and night
garments, caught up a big wagon sheet, and endeavored to spread it
over the exposed beds of the ladies. The wind was determined I should
not succeed, but I am English and obstinate. So I seized camera cases,
valises, boxes of canned food, and anything heavy, and placed them
upon the edges of the flapping canvas. Running back and forth to the
wagon, the lightning every now and again revealed a drenched, fantastic
figure, and I could hear suppressed laughter and giggles from under the
blankets whence should have issued songs of thankfulness to me. But "it
was ever thus!" I succeeded finally in pinning down the canvas, and had
just rolled my wet and shivering form in my own drenched blankets, when
Mr. Voth, with a lantern in his hand, came and simply demanded that
the ladies come over to warmth and shelter in his hospitable house.
Hastily wrapping themselves up, they started, blown about by the wind
and flaunted by the tempest. The sand made it harder still to walk, and
out of breath and wildly dishevelled, they struggled up the bank of the
Wash and were soon comfortably ensconsed indoors. Then, strange irony
of events, the storm immediately ceased, the heavens cleared, the stars
shone bright, the cool night air became delicious to the nostrils and
tired bodies, and we who remained outside had a sleep as ineffably
sweet as that of healthful babes, while the ladies sweltered and rolled
and tossed with discomfort in the moist heat that had accumulated in
the closed rooms.
[Illustration: THE PAINTED DESERT NEAR THE LITTLE COLORADO RIVER.]
[Illustration: ASLEEP, EARLY MORNING, ON THE PAINTED DESERT.]
A few years later I was again at Oraibi, and strangely near the same
camping place. This time my companions were W. W. Bass, whose early
adventures have been recounted in my "In and Around the Grand Canyon,"
a photographer, and a British friend of his who had stopped off in
California on his way home from Japan. Mr. Britisher had contributed a
small share towards the expenses of the expedition, but with insular
ignorance he had presumed that his small mite would pay the expenses
of the whole outfit for a long period. It must be confessed that we
had had a most arduous trip. The Painted Desert had shown its ugly
side from the very moment we left the railway. Four miles out we had
been stopped by the most terrific and vivid lightning-storm it has
ever been my good fortune to witness and to be scared half out of my
wits with. At Rock Tanks we had another storm. We had been jolted
and shaken on our way out to Hopi Point of the Grand Canyon, and had
come so near to perishing for want of water that we fell on our knees
and greedily drank the vilest liquid from an alkali pool, a standing
place of horses, on our way to the Little Colorado. At the old Tanner
Crossing of that stream we had had another rain and lightning-storm
near unto the first in fury, and in which our British friend had
been caught in his blankets and nearly frightened to death. In the
Moenkopi Wash he was offended because I left the wagon to ride to
the home and accept the hospitality of the Mormon bishop, which he
interpreted again with insular ignorance to mean a palace, a place of
luxury, exquisite restfulness, good foods, and delicious iced wines,
while he was left to beans, bacon, flapjacks, and dried fruit, and a
roll of blankets on the rough and uneven ground. (It didn't make any
difference that I explained to him next day that I had slept on a
grass plot with one quilt and no pillow, cold, shivering, and longing
for my good substantial roll of Navaho blankets, left for him to use
if he so desired, and that our "banquet" had been coarse bread and a
bowl of milk.) Then we had had another storm at Toh-gas-je, which I
had partially avoided by riding on ahead in the light wagon of the
Indian agent who piloted us, while he--Mr. Britisher--was in the
heavier ambulance. The next night we camped, attempting to sleep on
the stony slopes of the hillside at Blue Canyon in wretchedness and
misery, because it was too late when we arrived to dare to drive down
into the canyon. The next day we drove over the Sahara of America, a
sandy desert which even to the Hopis is the most a-tu-u-u (hot) of
all earthly places. That noon we camped in the dry wash of Tnebitoh,
where we had to dig for water, waiting for it slowly to seep into the
hole we had dug. It was a sandy, alkaline decoction, but we were glad
and thankful for it, and the way the poor horses stood and longingly
looked on as we waited for the inflow was pitiable. At night we camped
some twelve or fifteen miles farther on, without water, hobbling the
horses and turning them loose. I had engaged an Indian to go with us
from Blue Canyon as helper and guide, so I sent him, in the morning, to
bring in the horses. Two or three hours later he returned, with but one
of the animals, and said he had tried to track the others, but could
not do so. Imagine what our predicament would have been, in the heart
of the desert, without horses and water, and many miles away from any
settlement. There was but one thing to be done, and Mr. Bass at once
did it. Putting a bridle on the one horse, he rode off barebacked after
the runaways. Knowing the character of his mules, he aimed directly
for the Tnebitoh. When he arrived at the spot where we had watered
the day before, he found that, with unerring instinct, the horses had
returned to this spot and had dug new watering places for themselves.
Then, scenting the cool grass of the San Francisco Mountains, they had
aimed directly west, and, hobbled though they were, the tracks showed
they were travelling at a lively rate of speed. Knowing the urgency and
desperateness of our case, Bass followed as fast as he could make his
almost exhausted animal go, and after an hour's hard riding saw, in the
far-away distance, the three perverse creatures "hitting" the trailless
desert as hard as they could. Jersey, a knowing mule, was in the lead.
He soon saw Bass, and, seeming to communicate with the others, they
turned and saw him also. Jack (the other mule) and the horse at once
showed a disposition to stop, but Jersey with bite and whinney tried to
drive them on. Finding his efforts useless, he stopped with the others,
and, when Bass rode up, allowed himself to be "necked" (tied neck to
neck) with the other two. Horses and man were as near "played out" as
we cared to see them when, later in the day, they returned to camp.
It does not do to go out upon the Painted Desert without some practical
person who is capable of meeting all serious emergencies that are
likely to arise.
The next day we drove on to Oraibi, in the scorching sun, over the
sandy hillocks, where no road would last an hour in a wind-storm
unless it were thoroughly blanketed and pegged down. We were all hot,
weary, and ill-tempered. Thinking to help out, I volunteered to walk
up the steep western trail to the mesa top and secure some corn at
Oraibi for our horses, so that they could be fed at once on reaching
our stopping place on the east side. When we started I had suggested
the hope that we might be able to stop in the schoolhouse below the
Oraibi mesa, as I had several times done in times before; but when
the wagon arrived there, and I came down from the mesa, it was found
to be already occupied by persons to whom it had been promised by the
Indian agent. Camping, then, was the only thing left open to us, until
I could see the Hopis and rent one of their houses. Down we drove to
the camp, where alone a sufficiency of water was to be found. This
explains our close proximity to the camp of the earlier year. We were
just preparing our meal when a fierce sand-storm blew up. Cooking was
out of the question; the fire blew every which way, and the sand filled
meat, beans, corn, tomatoes with too much grit for comfort. This was
the last straw that broke the back of Mr. Britisher's complacency. He
had bemoaned again and again the leaving of his comfortable home to
come into this "God-forsaken region," in a quest of what our crazy
westernism called pleasure, and now his fury burst upon me in a manner
that dwarfed the passion of the heavens and the earth. While there
was a refinement in his vituperation, there was an edge upon it as
keen as fury, passion, and culture could give it. I was scorched by
his scarifying lightnings, struck again and again by his vindictive
thunderbolts, tossed hither and thither by his stormy winds, and
lifted heavenwards and then dashed downwards by the tornadoes and
whirlwinds of his passion. It was dazzling, bewildering, intensely
interesting, and then fiercely irritating. I stood it all until he
denounced my selfishness. There's no doubt I am selfish, but there is a
limit to a fellow's endurance when another fellow claims the discovery
and rubs it in upon you until he abrades the skin. So I raised my hand
and also my voice: "Stop, that's enough. Dare to repeat that and I'll
tie you on a horse and send you back to the railway in charge of an
Indian so quickly that you'll wonder how you got there. Selfish, am I?
I permitted you to come on this trip as a favor to my photographer. The
paltry sum you paid me has not found one-fourth share of the corn for
one horse, let alone your own food, the hire of the horses, wagon, and
driver. To oblige you I have allowed you the whole way to ride inside
my conveyance that you might talk together, while I have sat out in the
hot sun. If any help has been needed by Mr. Bass in driving, I have
willingly given it instead of calling upon you. I have done all the
unpacking and the packing of the wagon at each camp, morning, noon, and
night. I have done all the cooking and much of the dish-washing, and
yet you have the impudence and mendacity to say I have been selfish.
Very well! I'll take myself at your estimate. In future I'll take my
seat inside the ambulance; you shall do your share of helping the
driver. You shall do your share of the packing; and if you eat another
mouthful, so long as you remain in my camp, you shall cook it yourself.
I have spoken! And when I thus speak I speak as the laws of the Medes
and Persians, which alter not, nor change!"
[Illustration: THE COLORADO RIVER AT BASS FERRY, THE VAMPIRE OF THE
PAINTED DESERT.]
"Well, ---- says you are selfish!" burst out the somewhat cowed man.
"Then I put him on the same plane as I put you; and if ever either of
you dares to make that charge again, I will--"
Well, never mind what I, in my, what I still believe to be, just anger
threatened. I turned away, went and secured an Indian's house, and that
night we removed there.
But I wish I had the space to recount how those two unfortunates and
misfortunates cooked their own meals and mine and Bass's. It is a
subject fit for a Dickens or a Kipling. No minor pen can do justice to
it. How they came and asked with quiet humility, "What are we going
to have for supper?" and how I replied, "Raw potatoes, so far as I am
concerned!" Neither knew whether a frying-pan was for skimming cream
from a can of condensed milk or for making charlotte russes. Neither
could boil water without scorching it. But surreptitiously (with my
secret connivance) Bass gave the tyros gentle hints and finally "licked
them" into fourth-rate cooks, so that I reaped the reward of their
labors in selfishly and shamelessly taking some of the concoctions they
had slaved over.
I know this plain, unvarnished tale reveals me a "bad man from Bodie,"
but I started out to give a truthful account of the Painted Desert and
its storms, and this "tempest in a frying-pan" in camp cannot well be
ignored by a veracious chronicler.
Last year, fate designed that we camp at exactly the same spot. The
two wagons came to rest at about the same place where the ambulance
stood, and exactly the same wind and sand-storm blew up before we had
been there half an hour. I had with me a long, eight-feet-high strip of
canvas belonging to a very large circular tent. To ward off the force
of some part of the storm we stretched this canvas from the trunk of
one cottonwood tree to another, and moved our camp to the sheltered
side. That was an insult to the powers of the storm. The wind fairly
howled with rage, and pulled and tugged and flapped that canvas in a
perfect fury of anger. Then as we huddled in its shelter, a sudden jerk
came, and up it was ripped, from top to bottom, in a moment, and the
loose ends went wildly flying and flapping every way. In the blowing
sand I fled with the ladies to Mr. Voth's ever-hospitable house, but
it was as hot as--well! no matter--in there. Outside, the cottonwoods
were bowed over in the fury of the wind, and the sand went flying by in
sheets. It was easy then to understand the remark of one experienced in
the ways of the Painted Desert Region: "If you ever buy any real estate
here, contract to have it anchored, or you'll wake up some morning and
find it all blown into the next county." The flying sand literally
obliterated every object more than a few feet away.
Now in this last case I had the pleasure--as peculiar a pleasure as it
is to watch the coming of a hurricane at sea--to see the oncoming of
this storm. We were enjoying perfect calm. Suddenly over the Oraibi
mesa there came a great brown mass that stretched entirely across the
country. It was the tawny sand risen in power and majesty to drive us
from its lair. It was so grand, so sublime, so alive, that just as
I instinctively rush to my camera at sight of an interesting face,
I dashed towards it to secure a photograph of this new, gigantic,
living manifestation. But in its fierce fury it swept upon us with such
rapidity that I was too late. We were covered with it, buried in it.
As darkness leaps upon one and absorbs him, so did this storm absorb
us. In an hour or so its greatest fury subsided; then we thought we
would build our camp-fire and proceed to our regular cooking. How the
wind veered and changed, and changed again as soon as the fire began to
ascend. That is a point to watch in building a camp-fire. Be sure and
locate it so that its smoke won't blow upon you when you sit down to
eat. In this case, however, it would not have mattered. In my notebook
I read: "We have changed the camp-fire three times, and no matter where
we put it, the smoke swoops down upon us. Even now while I write I am
half blinded by the smoke, which ten minutes ago was being blown in the
opposite direction." So that if these few pages have an unpleasant odor
of camp-fire smoke about them, the reader must charge it to the wilful
ways of the wind on the Painted Desert.
Elsewhere I have spoken of the mystery brooding over the peoples of
this land. It is also existent in the very colors of it, whether
noted in early morning, in the glare of the pitiless Arizona noon, or
at sunset; in the storm, with the air full of sand, or in the calm
and quiet of a cloudless sky; when the sky is cerulean or black with
lowering clouds; ever, always, the color is weird, strange, mysterious.
One night at Walpi several of us sat and watched the colorings in the
west. No unacquainted soul would have believed such could exist. To
describe it is as impossible as to analyze the feelings of love. It was
raining everywhere in the west; and "everywhere" means so much where
one's horizon is not limited. The eye there roams over what seem to be
boundless distances. In all this space rain was falling. The sun had
but half an hour more to live, and it flooded the sky with an orange
crimson. The rain came down in hairy streaks brilliantly illuminated.
The sun could be discerned only as a dimly veiled face, with the light
shed below it--none above--in graceful curves. Then the orange and
crimson changed to purple, deepening and deepening into blackness until
day was done.
Sometimes the lighting up of the desert in the early morning gives it
the effect of a sea-green ocean, and then the illusion is indescribably
wonderful. At such times, if there are clouds in the sky, the
reflections of color are as delicate and beautiful as the tintings of
the sea-shells.
One night standing on the mesa at Mashonganavi looking east and south,
the vast ocean-like expanse of tawny sand and desert was converted by
the hues of dying day into a gorgeous and resplendent sea of exquisite
and delicate color. On the further side were the Mogollon Buttes,--the
Giant's Chair, Pyramid Butte, and others,--with long walls, which,
in the early morning black and forbidding, were now illumined and
etherealized by the magic wand of sunset.
If, however, one would know another of the marvellous charms of this
Painted Desert Region let him see it in the early summer, after the
first rains. This may be the latter part of June or in July and August.
Then what a change! One seeing it for the first time would naturally
exclaim in protest: "Desert? Why, this is a garden!"
A thin and sparse covering of grass, but enough to the casual observer
to relieve the whole land from the charge of barrenness; the black and
white grama grasses, with their delicate shades of green; and a host of
wild flowers of most exquisite colors in glorious combinations. Here
masses of flaming marigolds and sunflowers; yonder patches of the white
and purple tinted flowers of the jimson-weed, while its rich green
leaves form a complete covering for the tawny sand or rocky desolation
beneath. Here are larkspurs, baby blue-eyes, Indian's paint brush,
daisies, lilies, and a thousand and one others, the purples, blues,
reds, pinks, whites, and browns giving one a chromatic feast, none the
less delightful because it is totally unexpected.
Then who can tell of the glory of the hundreds of cacti in bloom, great
prickly monsters, barrel shaped, cylindrical, lobe formed, and yet
all picked out in the rarest, most dainty flowers the eye of man ever
gazed upon? Look yonder at the "hosh-kon," one of the yucca family, a
sacred plant to the Navahoes. Its dagger-like green leaves are crowned
and glorified with the central stalk, around which cluster a thousand
waxen white bells, and this one is only a beginning to the marvellous
display of them we shall see as we ride along. The greasewood veils
its normal ugliness in revivified leaves and a delicate flossy yellow
bloom that makes it charming to the eye. Even the sagebrush attains to
some charm of greenness, and where the juniper and cedar and pine lurk
in the shades of some of the rocky slopes, the deepest green adds its
never-ending comfort and delight to the scene.
Yet you look in vain for the rivers, the creeks, the babbling brooks,
the bubbling fountains, the ponds, that charm your eye in Eastern
landscapes. Oh, for the Adirondacks,--the lakes and streams which
abound on every hand. If only these could be transplanted into this
desert to give their peculiar delights without any of their drawbacks,
_then_ the Painted Desert Region would be the ideal land.
It would never do to bring the Adirondack flies and gnats and
mosquitoes; its hot, sultry nights and muggy, sweltering days. No!
These we can do without. We would have its advantages, but with none of
its disadvantages.
How futile such wishes; how childish such longings! Each place
is itself; and, for myself, I love the Painted Desert even in
its waterlessness, its barrenness, and its desolation. Think of
its stimulating altitude, its colors, its clear, cloudless sky,
its glorious, divine stars, its delicious evening coolness, its
never-disturbed solitudes, its speaking silences, its romances, its
mysteries, its tragedies, its histories. These are some of the things
that make the Painted Desert what it is--a region of unqualified
fascination and allurement.