ht
down to breakfast."

"If the Apaches have vamosed, Coronado might join us," suggested
Thurstane.

"Never!" answered Mrs. Stanley with solemnity. "His ancestor stormed
Cibola and ravaged this whole country. If these people should hear his
name pronounced, and suspect his relationship to their oppressor, they
might massacre him."

"That was three hundred years ago," smiled the wretch of a lieutenant.

"It doesn't matter," decided Mrs. Stanley.

And so Coronado, thanks to one of his splendid inventions, was not invited
up to the pueblo.

The travellers spent the day in resting, in receiving a succession of
pleasant, tidy visitors, and in watching the ways of the little community.
The weather was perfect, for while the season was the middle of May, and
the latitude that of Algeria and Tunis, they were nearly six thousand feet
above the level of the sea, and the isolated butte was wreathed with
breezes. It was delightful to sit or stroll on the landings of the
ramparts, and overlook the flourishing landscape near at hand, and the
peaceful industry which caused it to bloom.

Along the hillside, amid the terraced gardens of corn, pumpkins, guavas,
and peaches, many men and children were at work, with here and there a
woman.

The scene had not only its charms, but its marvels. Besides the grand
environment of plateaus and mountains in the distance, there were near at
hand freaks of nature such as one might look for in the moon. Nowhere
perhaps has the great water erosion of bygone aeons wrought more
grotesquely and fantastically than in the Moqui basin. To the west rose a
series of detached buttes, presenting forms of castles, towers, and
minarets, which looked more like the handiwork of man than the pueblo
itself. There were piles of variegated sandstone, some of them four
hundred feet in height, crowned by a hundred feet of sombre trap. Internal
fire had found vent here; its outflowings had crystallized into columnar
trap; the trap had protected the underlying sandstone from cycles of
water-flow; thus had been fashioned these sublime donjons and pinnacles.

They were not only sublime but beautiful. The sandstone, reduced by ages
to a crumbling marl, was of all colors. There were layers of green,
reddish-brown, drab, purple, red, yellow, pinkish, slate, light-brown,
orange, white, and banded. Nature, not contented with building enchanted
palaces, had frescoed them. At this distance, indeed, the separate tints
of