using than
the crooked mazes of an ancient Oriental city.

Imagine shapeless masses of colored sandstone, unclimbable, barring the
way; acres of polished mottled rock tilted at angles which defy
crossing; unexpected canyons whose deep, broken, red and yellow
precipices force long detours.

And everywhere color, color, color. It pervades the glowing floor, the
uprising edifices. The very air palpitates with color, insistent,
irresistible, indefinable.

This is the setting of the Rainbow Bridge.

Scarcely more than a hundred persons besides Indians, they tell me, have
seen this most entrancing spectacle, perhaps, of all America. The way in
is long and difficult. There are only two or three who know it, even of
those who have been there more than once, and the region has no
inhabitants to point directions among the confusing rocks. There is no
water, nor any friendly tree.

[Illustration: ROOSEVELT PARTY IN MONUMENT VALLEY]

[Illustration: RAINBOW BRIDGE IN FULL PERSPECTIVE]

The day's ride is wearying in the extreme in spite of its fascinations.
The objective is Navajo Mountain, which, strange spectacle in this
desert waste, is forested to its summit with yellow pine above a
surrounding belt of juniper and pinyon, with aspen and willows, wild
roses, Indian paint-brush, primrose, and clematis in its lower valleys.
Below, the multicolored desert, deep cut with the canyons which carry
off the many little rivers.

Down one of these wild and highly colored desert canyons among whose
vivid tumbled rocks your horses pick their course with difficulty, you
suddenly see a rainbow caught among the vivid bald rocks, a slender arch
so deliciously proportioned, so gracefully curved among its sharp
surroundings, that your eye fixes it steadfastly and your heart bounds
with relief; until now you had not noticed the oppression of this
angled, spine-carpeted landscape.

From now on nothing else possesses you. The eccentricity of the going
constantly hides it, and each reappearance brings again the joy of
discovery. And at last you reach it, dismount beside the small clear
stream which flows beneath it, approach reverently, overwhelmed with a
strange mingling of awe and great elation. You stand beneath its
enormous encircling red and yellow arch and perceive that it is the
support which holds up the sky. It is long before turbulent emotion
permits the mind to analyze the elements which compose its extraordinary
beauty.

Dimens