scos, and there are several quaint
paintings, some of them not very bad in color and drawing. The altar,
which is supported at the sides by twisted wooden pillars, carved with a
knife, is hung with ancient sheepskins brightly painted. Back of the
altar are some archaic wooden images, colored; and over the altar, on
the ceiling, are the stars of heaven, and the sun and the moon, each
with a face in it. The interior was scrupulously clean and sweet and
restful to one coming in from the glare of the sun on the desert. It was
evidently little used, and the Indians who accompanied us seemed under
no strong impression of its sanctity; but we liked to linger in it, it
was so _bizarre_, so picturesque, and exhibited in its rude decoration
so much taste. Two or three small birds flitting about seemed to enjoy
the coolness and the subdued light, and were undisturbed by our
presence.

These are children of the desert, kin in their condition and the
influences that formed them to the sedentary tribes of upper Egypt and
Arabia, who pitch their villages upon the rocky eminences, and depend
for subsistence upon irrigation and scant pasturage. Their habits are
those of the dwellers in an arid land which has little in common with
the wilderness--the inhospitable northern wilderness of rain and frost
and snow. Rain, to be sure, insures some sort of vegetation in the most
forbidding and intractable country, but that does not save the harsh
landscape from being unattractive. The high plateaus of New Mexico and
Arizona have everything that the rainy wilderness lacks--sunshine,
heaven's own air, immense breadth of horizon, color and infinite beauty
of outline, and a warm soil with unlimited possibilities when moistened.
All that these deserts need is water. A fatal want? No. That is simply
saying that science can do for this region what it cannot do for the
high wilderness of frost--by the transportation of water transform it
into gardens of bloom and fields of fruitfulness. The wilderness shall
be made to feed the desert.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH AT LAGUNA.]

I confess that these deserts in the warm latitudes fascinate me. Perhaps
it is because I perceive in them such a chance for the triumph of the
skill of man, seeing how, here and there, his energy has pushed the
desert out of his path across the continent. But I fear that I am not so
practical. To many the desert in its stony sterility, its desolateness,
its unbroken so