At last we descended to a comparative level and came to a little hamlet. Like all Mormon villages it had quaint log cabins, low stone houses, an irrigation ditch running at the side of the road, orchards, and many rosy-cheeked children. We lingered there long enough to rest a little and drink our fill of the cold granite water. I would travel out of my way to get a drink of water that came from granite rock.
About five o'clock we left for the Natural Bridge. Romer invited or rather taunted me to a race. When it ended in his victory I found that I had jolted my rifle out of its saddle sheath. I went back some distance to look for it, but did so in vain. Isbel said he would ride back in the morning and find it.
The country here appeared to be on a vast scale. But that was only because we had gotten out where we could see all around. Arizona is all on a grand, vast scale. Mountain ranges stood up to the south and east. North loomed up the lofty, steep rim of the Mogollon Mesa, with its cliffs of yellow and red, and its black line of timber. Westward lay fold on fold of low cedar-covered hills. The valley appeared a kind of magnificent bowl, rough and wild, with the distance lost in blue haze. The vegetation was dense and rather low. I saw both prickly-pear and mescal cactus, cedars, manzanita brush, scrub oak, and juniper trees. These last named were very beautiful, especially the smaller ones, with their gray-green foliage, and purple berries, and black and white checkered bark. There were no pine trees. Since we had left the rim above the character of plant life had changed.
We crossed the plateau leading to the valley where the Natural Bridge was located. A winding road descended the east side of this valley. A rancher lived down there. Green of alfalfa and orchard and walnut trees contrasted vividly with a bare, gray slope on one side, and a red, rugged mountain on the other. A deep gorge showed dark and wild. At length, just after sunset, we reached the ranch, and rode through orchards of peach and pear and apple trees, all colored with fruit, and down through grassy meadows to a walnut grove where we pitched camp. By the time we had supper it was dark. Wonderful stars, thick, dreamy hum of insects, murmur of swift water, a rosy and golden afterglow on the notch of the mountain range to the west—these were inducements to stay up, but I was so tired I had to go to bed, where my eyelids fell tight, as if pleasantly weighted.
After the long, hard rides and the barren camp-sites what delight to awaken in this beautiful valley with the morning cool and breezy and bright, with smell of new-mown hay from the green and purple alfalfa fields, and the sunlight gilding the jagged crags above! Romer made a bee-line for the peach trees. He beat his daddy only a few yards. The kind rancher had visited us the night before and he had told us to help ourselves to fruit, melons, alfalfa. Needless to state that I made my breakfast on peaches!
I trailed the swift, murmuring stream to its source on the dark green slope where there opened up a big hole bordered by water-cress, long grass, and fragrant mint. This spring was one of perfectly clear water, six feet deep, boiling up to bulge on the surface. A grass of dark color and bunches of light green plant grew under the surface. Bees and blue dragon-flies hummed around and frogs as green as the grass blinked with jewelled eyes from the wet margins. The spring had a large volume that spilled over its borders with low, hollow gurgle, with fresh, cool splash. The water was soft, tasting of limestone. Here was the secret of the verdure and fragrance and color and beauty and life of the oasis.
It was also the secret of the formation of the wonderful Natural Bridge. Part of the rancher's cultivated land, to the extent of several acres, was the level top of this strange bridge. A meadow of alfalfa and a fine vineyard, in the air, like the hanging gardens of Babylon! The natural bridge spanned a deep gorge, at the bottom of which flowed a swift stream of water. Geologically this tremendous arch of limestone cannot be so very old. In comparatively recent times an earthquake or some seismic disturbance or some other natural force caused a spring of water to burst from the slope above the gorge. It ran down, of course, over the rim. The lime salt in the water was deposited, and year by year and age by age advanced toward the opposite side until a bridge crossed the gorge. The swift stream at the bottom kept the opening clear under the bridge.
A winding trail led deep down on the lower side of this wonderful natural span. It showed the cliffs of limestone, porous, craggy, broken, chalky. At the bottom the gorge was full of tremendous boulders, water-worn ledges, sycamore and juniper trees, red and yellow flowers, and dark, beautiful green pools. I espied tiny gray frogs, reminding me of those I found in the gulches of the Grand Canyon. Many huge black beetles, some alive, but most of them dead, lined the wet borders of the pools. A species of fish that resembled mullet lay in the shadow of the rocks.
From underneath the Natural Bridge showed to advantage, and if not magnificent like the grand Nonnezoshe of Utah, it was at least striking and beautiful. It had a rounded ceiling colored gray, yellow, green, bronze, purple, white, making a crude and scalloped mosaic. Water dripped from it like a rain of heavy scattered drops. The left side was dryest and large, dark caves opened up, one above the other, the upper being so high that it was dangerous to attempt reaching it. The right side was slippery and wet. All rocks were thickly encrusted with lime salt. Doyle told us that any object left under the ceaseless drip, drip of the lime water would soon become encrusted, and heavy as stone. The upper opening of the arch was much higher and smaller than the lower. Any noise gave forth strange and sepulchral echoes. Romer certainly made the welkin ring. A streak of sunlight shone through a small hole in the thinnest part of the roof. Doyle pointed out the high cave where Indians had once lived, showing the markings of their fire. Also he told a story of Apaches being driven into the highest cave from which they had never escaped. This tale was manifestly to Romer's liking and I had to use force to keep him from risking his neck. A very strong breeze blew under the arch. When we rolled a boulder into the large, dark pool it gave forth a hollow boom, boom, boom, growing hollower the deeper it went. I tried to interest Romer in some bat nests in crevices high up, but the boy wanted to roll stones and fish for the mullet. When we climbed out and were once more on a level I asked him what he thought of the place. "Some hole—I'll say!" he panted, breathlessly.
The rancher told me that the summer rains began there about July, and the snows about the first of the year. Snow never lay long on the lower slopes. Apaches had lived there forty years ago and had cultivated the soil. There was gold in the mountains of the Four Peaks Range. In this sheltered nook the weather was never severely cold or hot; and I judged from the quaint talk of the rancher's wife that life there was always afternoon.