Then who can tell of the glory of the hundreds of cacti in bloom, great prickly monsters, barrel shaped, cylindrical, lobe formed, and yet all picked out in the rarest, most dainty flowers the eye of man ever gazed upon? Look yonder at the "hosh-kon," one of the yucca family, a sacred plant to the Navahoes. Its dagger-like green leaves are crowned and glorified with the central stalk, around which cluster a thousand waxen white bells, and this one is only a beginning to the marvellous display of them we shall see as we ride along. The greasewood veils its normal ugliness in revivified leaves and a delicate flossy yellow bloom that makes it charming to the eye. Even the sagebrush attains to some charm of greenness, and where the juniper and cedar and pine lurk in the shades of some of the rocky slopes, the deepest green adds its never-ending comfort and delight to the scene.
Yet you look in vain for the rivers, the creeks, the babbling brooks, the bubbling fountains, the ponds, that charm your eye in Eastern landscapes. Oh, for the Adirondacks,—the lakes and streams which abound on every hand. If only these could be transplanted into this desert to give their peculiar delights without any of their drawbacks, then the Painted Desert Region would be the ideal land.
It would never do to bring the Adirondack flies and gnats and mosquitoes; its hot, sultry nights and muggy, sweltering days. No! These we can do without. We would have its advantages, but with none of its disadvantages.
How futile such wishes; how childish such longings! Each place is itself; and, for myself, I love the Painted Desert even in its waterlessness, its barrenness, and its desolation. Think of its stimulating altitude, its colors, its clear, cloudless sky, its glorious, divine stars, its delicious evening coolness, its never-disturbed solitudes, its speaking silences, its romances, its mysteries, its tragedies, its histories. These are some of the things that make the Painted Desert what it is—a region of unqualified fascination and allurement.
CHAPTER III
FIRST GLIMPSES OF THE HOPI
Three great fingers of rock from a gigantic and misshapen hand, roughly speaking, pointing southward, the hand a great plateau, the fingers mesas of solid rock thrust into the heart of a sandy valley,—this is the home of the Hopi, commonly and wrongly termed the Moki. The fingers are from seven to ten miles apart, and a visitor can go from one finger-nail to another either by descending and ascending the steep trails zigzagged on the fingers' sides, or he can circle around on the back of the hand and thus in a round-about manner reach any one of the three fingers. These mesa fingers are generally spoken of as the first or east mesa, the second or middle mesa, and the third or west mesa. They gain their order from the fact that in the early days of American occupancy Mr. T. V. Keam established a trading-post in the canyon that bears his name, and this canyon being to the east of the eastern mesa, this mesa was reached first in order, the western mesa naturally being third.
On the east mesa are three villages. The most important of all Hopi towns is Walpi, which occupies the "nail" of this first "finger." It is not so large as Oraibi, but it has always held a commanding influence, which it still retains. Half a mile back of Walpi is Sichumavi, and still further back Hano, or, as it is commonly and incorrectly called, Tewa.