lly sportive? In the old days, when she produced
her uncouth monsters of the deep, was she in manner, as in age, a
child? Did she then play with her continents, and smile to see them
struggle up from the sea only to sink again? Was it caprice that made
her wrap her vast dominions in the icy bands of glaciers, or pour
upon them lava torrents, and frequently convulse them with a mighty
earthquake? If so, New Mexico and Arizona must have been her favorite
playgrounds. At many points her rock formations look like whimsical
imitations of man's handicraft, or specimens of the colossal
vegetation of an earlier age. Some are gigantic, while others bear a
ludicrous resemblance to misshapen dwarfs, suggesting, as they stand
like pygmies round their mightier brethren, a group of mediaeval
jesters in a court of kings. In the faint dusk of evening, as one
flits by them in the moving train, their weird, uncanny forms appear
to writhe in pain, and he is tempted to regard them as the material
shapes of tortured souls.

[Illustration: A MESA.]

The _mesas_ of New Mexico and Arizona are, usually, regular in
outline, sometimes resembling in the distance cloud-banks on the edge
of the horizon, but oftener suggesting mighty fortresses, or ramparts
to resist invasion, like the wall of China. These are not only
beautiful in form and color, but from the fact that they recall the
works of man, we gaze at them with wonder, and find in them a
fascinating interest. They prove that Nature needs some human
association to appeal strongly to us, and how man's history of smiles
and tears gives pathos, mystery, and romance to scenes which
otherwise would be merely coldly beautiful or terribly sublime. It is
for this reason, doubtless, that we are always endeavoring to
personify Nature. We think of solitary trees as lonely, of
storm-tossed waves as angry, and of a group of mountains as members
of one family. Thus some of the Arizona mountains are called
brothers. No doubt their birth was attended by the same throes of
Mother Earth, and they possess certain family resemblances in their
level summits, huge square shoulders, and the deep furrows in their
rugged cheeks; while all of them evince the same disdain for
decoration, scorning alike the soft rich robes of verdure and the
rough storm-coats of the pines.

[Illustration: A GROUP OF MESAS.]

[Illustration: ON THE OLD SANTA FE TRAIL.]

The idea of companionship in Nature is not wholly fanciful. Is