SUWARA (GIANT CACTUS), SALT RIVER VALLEY, ARIZONA
Every journey in Arizona seems to lead on into an enchanted world. The gray valley road, the curious mesa formations that stretch into infinite distances; the mystic apparition in the Estrella range of the Montezuma faces; the ruins of Casa Grande, which tell their tale of a massive city that once existed here; the ruins on the Rio Verde; the mounds and shafts discovered belonging to some prehistoric civilization; the ancient watch tower; the painted rocks, with their extensive hieroglyphics,—all speak to the archæologist in a language that fascinates the imagination. Its three greatest features—the Grand Cañon, regarding which there is neither speech nor language; the Petrified Forest, and that Submerged Star known as "Meteorite Mountain"—would alone make it the world mecca of scientists; to say nothing of the strange ruins of prehistoric peoples, of an unearthly beauty of atmospheric coloring, and of the contemporary scientific interest of the great Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff, or the splendid progress and development of the people. It might well have been of this marvellous country that Emerson wrote:
"And many a thousand summers
My gardens ripened well,
And light from meliorating stars
With firmer glory fell.
"I wrote the past in characters
Of rock and fire the scroll,
The building in the coral sea,