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The rocks of which the mesas are built, the sand of the desert, the peculiarly carved buttes which abound on every hand, are all strikingly colored, with such a variety of hues and tints that one does not wonder at the name the Painted Desert which is applied to the country through which we must travel to reach Hopiland. A Saddle Trip from El Tovar.
But the going remained bad for a while as the horses sank deep in a soft red earth. This eventually grew more solid and finally dry. Slone worked out of the cedars to what appeared a grassy plateau inclosed by the great green and white slope with its yellow wall overhanging, and distant mesas and cliffs. Here his view was restricted. He was down on the first bench of the great cañon.
Out of the gates of the morning poured a light which glorified the palaces and pyramids, purged and purified the afternoon's inscrutable clefts, swept away the shadows of the mesas, and bathed that broad, deep world of mighty mountains, stately spars of rock, sculptured cathedrals and alabaster terraces in an artist's dream of color.
Crashing thunder roared in the high Sierra, and as Shotaye looked around she saw the rain-streaks that swept down on the mesas in advance of the shower. The Sierra de la Jara had vanished in the clouds, and gray fleeces whirled about the flanks of the Sierra de San Miguel. She stood on the brink above the eastern end of the Rito, and began to descend over boulders and crags, and through bushes.
What the poor creatures who wandered over those dreary wastes could find to eat was a problem to be solved only by close observation of their ways. "H. H." said some years ago that the magnificent yucca, the glory of the Colorado mesas, was being exterminated by wandering cows, who ate the buds as soon as they appeared.
The pinto had ideas of his own. Should he buck in the yard, he would immediately be roped and turned into the corral again. Out on the mesas it would be different and it was. He paid no attention to a tumble-weed gyrating across the Apache road. Neither did he seem disturbed when a rattler burred in the bunch-grass.
The chaparral was destitute of foliage, and on the divides and higher mesas, had died. The native women stripped their jacals of every sacred picture, and hung them on the withered trees about their doors, where they hourly prayed to their patron saints. In the humblest homes on Las Palomas, candles burned both night and day to appease the frowning Deity.
Here we have the account of Goddard: "When an adult dies, the nearest relatives by blood wash the head, tie a feather offering to the hair so that it will hang over the forehead, wrap the body in a good robe and carry it to one of the graveyards which are in the valleys near the mesas. The body is buried in a sitting position so that it faces east.
I have alluded to the castellated Rock of Goascoran, which, however, is only a type of the general features of the surrounding country. The prevailing rock is sandstone, and it is broken up in fantastic peaks, or great cubical blocks with flat tops and vertical walls, resembling the mesas of New Mexico.
David Loring, erstwhile plainsman and scout, had drifted in the early days from New Mexico to Arizona with his small band of sheep, and settled in the valley of the Concho. He had been tolerated by the cattle-men, as his flock was but a speck on the limitless mesas.
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