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Show WILD LIFE IN ARIZONA. 257 as I intended remaining in the cafion all day. We had scarcely got our baggage piled, before the whole community of three families were about us. I pacified them with tobacco, preferring, if we got into a strait, to do without that, rather than bread. Bat Canon there runs nearly straight west, and is joined by Caflon de Chelley from the north- east ; the meeting of the two and the turn below produces three grand peaks, facing to one center, some fifteen hundred feet high, and quite perpendicular. But the most remarkable and unaccountable feature of the locality is where the two cailons meet. There stands out a hundred feet from the point, entirely iso-lated, a vast leaning rock tower, at least twelve hundred feet high, and not over two hundred thick at the base, as if it had originally been the sharp termination of the cliff, and been broken off and shoved further out. It almost seems that one must be mistaken, that it must have some connection with the cliff, until one goes around it and finds it a hundred feet or more from the former. It leans at an angle from the perpendicular of at least fifteen degrees ; and lying down at the base on the under side, by the best " sighting " I could make, it seemed to me that the opposite upper edge was directly ovec me. That is to say, mechanically speaking, its center of gravity barely falls within the base, and a heave of only a yard or two more would cause it to topple over. Appearances indicate that it was originally connected with the point of the cliff, but the intermediate and softer sand- rock has fallen, been reduced to sand, and wafted away down the cafion. Climbing to some of the curious round holes in the cliff I could see the process of wear going on ; the harder parti-cles of the sand blown into the holes, were being whirled about by the wind, slowly and steadily boring into the cliffs, and beginning that carvkig which is to result in more of the grotesque ' shapes. It was but a few miles now, the guide informed me, till we should reach the celebrated " cliff cities " which have made this cafion so famous. While leaning on the pommel of my saddle in an after- din-ner rest, I was startled by a shout from my guide of " Ah- yee ! Ah-yee, Melicano, ettah- hof/ anday ! " (" There, there, sir American ; the mountain- houses.") Looking, I saw the first hamlet, a small collec-tion of stone huts some fifteen hundred feet above the cafion bed, and perhaps three hundred feet below the summit. One glance served to disprove many of the theories advanced about rope ladders and the like. It could not have been reached thus, for the cliff overhung considerably both above and below it. Indeed, a rope dropped from the brow of the cliff above would have swung over the canon a 17 |