ed at Bubbling Spring, which once had been a geyser
of considerable power. Wetherill told a story of an old Navajo who had
lived there. For a long time, according to the Indian tale, the old
chief resided there without complaining of this geyser that was wont
to inundate his fields. But one season the unreliable waterspout made
great and persistent endeavor to drown him and his people and horses.
Whereupon the old Navajo took his gun and shot repeatedly at the
geyser, and thundered aloud his anger to the Great Spirit. The geyser
ebbed away, and from that day never burst forth again.

[Illustration: WEIRD AND WONDERFUL MONUMENTS IN MONUMENT VALLEY]

[Illustration: SUNSET ON THE DESERT]

[Illustration: CAVE OF THE CLIFF DWELLERS]

Somewhere under the great bulge of Navajo Mountain I calculated that we
were coming to the edge of the plateau. The white bobbing pack-horses
disappeared and then our extra mustangs. It is no unusual thing for a
man to use three mounts on this trip. Then two of our Indians
disappeared. But Wetherill waited for us and so did Nas ta Bega, the
Piute who first took Wetherill down into Nonnezoshe Boco. As I came up I
thought we had indeed reached the end of the world.

"It's down in there," said Wetherill, with a laugh.

Nas ta Bega made a slow sweeping gesture. There is always something so
significant and impressive about an Indian when he points anywhere. It
is as if he says, "There, way beyond, over the ranges, is a place I
know, and it is far." The fact was that I looked at the Piute's dark,
inscrutable face before I looked out into the void.

My gaze then seemed impelled and held by things afar, a vast yellow
and purple corrugated world of distance, apparently now on a level
with my eyes. I was drawn by the beauty and grandeur of that scene;
and then I was transfixed, almost by fear, by the realization that
I dared to venture down into this wild and upflung fastness. I kept
looking afar, sweeping the three-quarter circle of horizon till my
judgment of distance was confounded and my sense of proportion dwarfed
one moment and magnified the next.

Wetherill was pointing and explaining, but I had not grasped all he
said.

"You can see two hundred miles into Utah," he went on. "That bright
rough surface, like a washboard, is wind-worn rock. Those little lines
of cleavage are canyons. There are a thousand canyons down there, and
only a few have we been in. That long purple ragged line is the