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Show WILD LIFE IN ARIZONA. 261 void which reason can not pass, and can only think : " IN THE BEGIN-NING, GOD There, in childhood, we began ; there, after ages of scientific con-jecture, must we rest. Reason exhausted leans on faith, and learning's last endeavor ends where revelation began. We were off* next day at the first glimmer of dawn, hoping to reach grass and water early in the afternoon, and knowing that at the best we had a long day's ride before us. It is delightful for travel till about 10 o'clock; then the morning breeze dies away, and, as the afternoon breeze does not rise till about three, the intervening heat is terrible. We are already nearly two thousand feet below Defiance, and going a little lower every day, with corresponding change in the climate. The grand scenery continues to the very mouth of the canon, which we reached in two hours, then breaks down into a brief succes-sion of foot- hills and ridges of loose sand, and brings us to an open plain. Here were two or three sections of land under some sort of cultivation by the Navajoes, but it was the most pitiable prospect for a crop I ever saw. The feeble, yellow blades of corn, three or four inches in height, had struggled along through drought and cold till the heavy frost of June 17th, and now most of them lay flat on the ground. My guide waved his hand over the field, exclaiming, mourn-fully, " Muerto, muerto " ( dead) ; " no chinneahgo Navajoes" A few of the more resolute were out replanting,. which they did with a sharpened stick, or rather paddle. They dig a hole some ten inches through the dry surface sand to the moist layer underneath, in the edge of which they deposit the grain. They plant wheat the same way, in little hills a foot or so apart, and weed it carefully till it is grown enough to cul-tivate. If there is water, they irrigate ; otherwise, it has to take its chances ; and the guide informed me that the acecquia we saw issuing from the canon had long been dry. Twenty bushels of'corn and ten of wheat are extra crops. If any citizen of rural Ohio, who can de-liberately sit down three times a day and recklessly eat all his appe-tite craves, is dissatisfied, he ought to travel awhile in this country. Crossing the dry arroyo we rose on the western side to a vast flood-plain, ten miles wide, and running as far as I could see from north to south. The surface showed that it had been flooded some time within the last few years ; there was not a trace of alkali or other noxious mineral, and the soil was of great natural fertility. But there was not a spear of vegetation on it, simply for lack of moisture. Here are at least a hundred square miles, formed of detritus and vegetable mold, now utterly worthless for want of water. If artesian wells are possible, |
