OCR Text |
Show 154 BY PATH AND TEAIL. vomit compared to which the Matatutu discharge is but an intestinal disturbance. The San Francisco mountain, 13,000 feet high, on the northwestern edge of Arizona, is one of the most beauti ful mountains in America. At some period, geologically recent, it was the focus of an igneus commotion of un-equaled duration and violence. It poured out rivers and lakes of lava, which covered the land for two hundred square miles and raised it in places 500 feet. This state ment may stagger belief, but any one who leaves the Santa Fe at Ash Fork and follows the trail to the Hupais village of Ave Supais, and begins the descent of Cataract Canyon, may verify for himself the enormous depth of this unprecedented flow. Eeturning to Ash Fork, when the sun is declining and the sky flecked with clouds, the same man will see a sunset impossible of description, paralyzing the genius of a Paul, Loraine and the brush of a Turner. Then the heavens are bathed in a lurid blood color, in purple and saffron, or gleam with vivid sheen of molten, burnished gold, when a falling cataract of fiery vermilion rests upon the purple peaks and ridges of the western moun tains. I know not any land where the full majesty of the text of the inspired writer is more luminously pres ent than here in this region of wonders. " The heavens declareth the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork." East of the Missouri river this is an unknown land, even to the well- informed American. Wealthy and pre sumedly educated citizens of the East spend millions annually sightseeing in Europe and Egypt, when here, within their borders, is a land where mysterious and pre- historic races dwell, where nature and nature's God |