I became more familiar with mesa trails thereafter, but this first one was a thrill. Sand had blown into the road, and the wheels crunched through it, and the brakes ground and screeched against the tires. [[106]]
“When the troops were here last,” said the driver cheerfully, “a pack-mule went over at this place, and he rolled until he fetched up against the bottom.”
I silently wished he would attend to his driving.
“And there is your Agency,” said the official, pointing. “You can see as far as you like from that place, if you look straight up.”
Below in the great gash were the buildings of the plant, gray, lonely-looking, standing in barren grounds; but large as they were, the rocky walls of the cañon dwarfed them. So clear was the air that they appeared as toy houses, cut-outs pasted on a strip of pebbled cardboard. There was a straight line of them, for the cañon, generous enough in other dimensions, had not room for grouping at its bottom. It was a rough trough hewn by quake and flood. For centuries the waters had torn at it, until their bed was now far below the site of the buildings; and for centuries the sand had drifted in to form rounded domes that buttressed the walls. Each season’s tremors disturbed the shattered rocks, sending some to the bottom in tearing, grinding slides and posing others at new angles.
HOPI INDIAN AGENCY AT KEAMS CAÑON
HOPI INDIAN HOSPITAL AT KEAMS CAÑON
Capacity, 40 patients: Designed and constructed by employees of the Agency under Superintendent Crane