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Show 256 WESTERN WILDS. ber of larger growth. The surroundings all show that we are on the Pacific coast; the dry, gray and yellow grass, straight sugar- pines and scraggy hemlocks, and the soft airs loaded with resinous odors. We enter next upon a vast flat of sandstone, on which the little feet of Navajo burros have cut the trail into a groove two inches deep, and cross it to the head of Bat Caflon. The first view is discouraging. We come suddenly to an abrupt break in the sandstone, no more than a rod wide, down which we can look a thousand feet perpendicular to the yellow bottom. A few hundred yards beyond we find a side groove, which lets us down to the first offset, and thence, by a succession of rocky grooves, we work our way with cautious steps to the bottom. W r e appear to be at the bottom of a vast funnel, but there is a pass three rods wide, still leading downward. Soon the cliffs above us overhang, and we pass through a gorge where the sun never shines, and thousands of gaunt bats, of a strange species, inhabit the crevices of the cliffs, and flit about in midday twilight. According to my guide, this is the place by way of which cowardly Navajoes must enter the spirit- land after death. Passing this the narrow walls give back, and we are in a little valley with running water and occasional clumps of grass, and bounded by perpendicular cliffs. As we proceed, the valley gets wider, but the walls appear to overhang rather than maintain a plumb line. Occasionally, an entirely detached rock is seen standing out from some sharp corner where there is a turn in the canon, a sort of tower sev-eral hundred feet high, and no more than a hundred thick, its sides and summit cut into a thousand fanciful shapes by the action of sand and wind. Other pieces of the cliff appear to have been loosened, and to have slipped down ; and in many places there were enormous slabs two or three hundred feet high leaning against the wall. Wind and loose sand had cut the face of the cliff into ten thousand fanciful shapes: elephants, hippopotami, alligators, and most ludicrous human heads looked down upon us, and from a peak two thousand feet over-head a gigantic bear appeared just plunging from the summit. " Mahloka ! " exclaimed the guide, and following . the direction of his finger, I saw the " woman," a shepherd girl, springing down over the rocks in a narrow side gulch. She showed me, through the narrow opening into the gulch, that the latter widened out behind the cliffs into a rocky valley where her herd of goats were feeding. She preferred the common request for chin- ne- ah- go ( bread), and in return for a small gift, conducted us to a plat of good grass, near the junc-tion of Caflon de Chelley, where we let our animals graze two hours, |
