It was on our way back over this trail that we learned one good reason why the dwellers of this land must keep to the high rock crests. Crossing the high mesa, we had felt the wind begin to blow, when like Drummond's Habitant Skipper, "it blew and then it blew some more." By the time we reached the sandy plain below, such a hurricane had broken as I have seen only once before, and that was off the coast of Labrador, when for six hours we could not see the sea for the foam. The billows of sand literally lifted. You could not see the sandy plain for a dust fine as flour that wiped out every landmark three feet ahead of your horses' noses. The wheels sank hub deep in sand. Of trail, not a sign was left; and you heard the same angry roar as in a hurricane at sea. But like the eternal rocks, dim and serene and high above the turmoil, stood the First Mesa village of Moki Land. Perhaps after all, these little squat Pueblo Indians knew what they were doing when they built so high above the dust storms. Twice the rear wheels lifted for a glorious upset; but we veered and tacked and whipped the fagged horses on. For three hours the hurricane lasted, and when finally it sank with an angry growl and we came out of the fifteen miles of sand into sagebrush and looked back, the rosy tinge of an afterglow lay on the gray pile of stone where the Moki town crests the top of the lofty mesa.
In justice to travelers and Desert dwellers, two or three facts should be added. Such dust storms occur only in certain spring months. So much in fairness to the Painted Desert. Next, I have cursorily given slight details of the Desert storm, because I don't want any pleasure seekers to think the Painted Desert can be crossed with the comfort of a Pullman car. You have to pay for your fun. We paid in that blinding, stinging, smothering blast as from a furnace, from three to half past five. Women are supposed to be irrepressible talkers. Well—we came to the point where not a soul in the carriage could utter a word for the dust. Lastly, when we saw that the storm was to be such a genuine old-timer, we ought to have tied wet handkerchiefs across our mouths. Glasses we had to keep the dust out of our eyes; but that dust is alkali, and it took a good two weeks' sneezing and a very sore throat to get rid of it.
Of the Three Mesas and Oraibi and Hotoville, space forbids details except that they are higher than the village at Acoma. Overlooking the Painted Desert in every direction, they command a view that beggars all description and almost staggers thought. You seem to be overlooking Almighty God's own amphitheater of dazzlingly-colored infinity; and naturally you go dumb with joy of the beauty of it and lose your own personality and perspective utterly. We lunched on the brink of a white precipice 1,500 feet above anywhere, and saw Moki women toiling up that declivity with urns of water on their heads, and photographed naked urchins sunning themselves on the baking bare rock, and stood above estufas, or sacred underground council chambers, where the Pueblos held their religious rites before the coming of the Spaniards.
Of the Moki towns, Oraibi is, perhaps, cleaner and better than the Three Mesas. The mesas are indescribably, unspeakably filthy. At Oraibi, you can wander through adobe houses clean as your own home quarters, the adobe hard as cement, the rooms divided into sleeping apartments, cooking room, meal bin, etc. Also, being nearer the formation of the Grand Cañon, the coloring surrounding the Mesa is almost as gorgeous as the Cañon.
If it had not been that the season was verging on the summer rains, which flood the Little Colorado, we should have gone on from Oraibi to the Grand Cañon. But the Little Colorado is full of quicksands, dangerous to a span of a generous host's horses; so we came back the way we had entered. As we drove down the winding trail that corkscrews from Oraibi to the sand plain, a group of Moki women came running down the footpath and met us just as we were turning our backs on the Mesa.
"We love you," exclaimed an old woman extending her hand (the Government doctor interpreted for us), "we love you with all our hearts and have come down to wish you a good-by."