cal facts are quoted,
has been at great pains to trace the wanderings of the Quivira myth.
Bandelier mentions an ancient New Mexican Indian called Tio Juan Largo,
who told a Spanish explorer about the middle of the eighteenth century
that Quivira was Tabira. Otherwise history is silent concerning the
process by which the myth finally settled upon that historic city, far
indeed from its authentic home in what now is Kansas. The fact stands,
however, that as late as the latter half of the eighteenth century the
name Tabira appeared on the official map of New Mexico. When and how
this name was lost and the famous ruined city with its Spanish churches
accepted as Gran Quivira perhaps never will be definitely known.

"Mid-ocean is not more lonesome than the plains, nor night so gloomy as
that dumb sunlight," wrote Lummis in 1893, approaching the Gran Quivira
across the desert. "The brown grass is knee-deep, and even this shock
gives a surprise in this hoof-obliterated land. The bands of antelope
that drift, like cloud shadows, across the dun landscape suggest less of
life than of the supernatural. The spell of the plains is a wondrous
thing. At first it fascinates. Then it bewilders. At last it crushes. It
is intangible but resistless; stronger than hope, reason, will--stronger
than humanity. When one cannot otherwise escape the plains, one takes
refuge in madness."

This is the setting of the "ghost city" of "ashen hues," that "wraith
in pallid stone," the Gran Quivira.

EL MORRO NATIONAL MONUMENT

Due west from Albuquerque, New Mexico, not far from the Arizona
boundary, El Morro National Monument conserves a mesa end of striking
beauty upon whose cliffs are graven many inscriptions cut in passing by
the Spanish and American explorers of more than two centuries. It is a
historical record of unique value, the only extant memoranda of several
expeditions, an invaluable detail in the history of many. It has helped
trace obscure courses and has established important departures. To the
tourist it brings home, as nothing else can, the realization of these
grim romances of other days.

El Morro, the castle, is also called Inscription Rock. West of its
steepled front, in the angle of a sharp bend in the mesa, is a large
partly enclosed natural chamber, a refuge in storm. A spring here
betrays the reason for El Morro's popularity among the explorers of a
semidesert region. The old Zuni trail bent from its course to touch this