er, and look like masses of red
sealing-wax; others are agate, or opalescent chalcedony, beautifully lined
and variegated; many retain the graining, layers, knots, and other details
of their woody structure.

In places where the marls had been washed away gently, the emigrants found
trunks complete, from root to summit, fifty feet in length and three in
diameter. All the branches, however, were gone; the tree had been
uprooted, transported, whirled and worn by deluges; then to commemorate
the victory of the water sprites, it had been changed into stone. The
sight of these remnants of antediluvian woodlands made history seem the
reminiscence of a child. They were already petrifactions when the human
race was born.

The Painted Desert has other marvels. Throughout vast stretches you pass
between tinted _mesas_, or tables, which face each other across flat
valleys like painted palaces across the streets of Genova la Superba. They
are giant splendors, hundreds of feet in height, built of blood-red
sandstone capped with variegated marls. The torrents, which scooped out
the intersecting levels, amused their monstrous leisure with carving the
points and abutments of the _mesa_ into fantastic forms, so that the
traveller sees towers, minarets, and spires loftier than the pinnacles of
cathedrals.

The emigrants were often deceived by these freaks of nature. Beheld from a
distance, it seemed impossible that they should not be ruins, the
monuments of some Cyclopean race. Aunt Maria, in particular, discovered
casas grandes and casas de Montezuma very frequently.

"There is another casa," she would say, staring through her spectacles
(broken) at a butte three hundred feet high. "What a people it must have
been which raised such edifices!"

And she would stick to it, too, until she was close up to the solid rock,
and then would renew the transforming miracle five or ten miles further
on.

During this long and marvellous journey Coronado renewed his courtship. He
was cautious, however; he made a confidant of his friend Aunt Maria;
begged her favorable intercession.

"Clara," said Mrs. Stanley, as the two women jolted along in one of the
lumbering wagons, "there is one thing in your life which perhaps you don't
suspect."

The girl, who wanted to hear about Thurstane all the time, and expected to
hear about him, asked eagerly, "What is it?"

"You have made Mr. Coronado fall in love with you," said Aunt Maria,
thinking it wis