which was a veritable impenetrable jungle in
places, a part of the great Coconino forest. Think and wonder! An
unbroken forest of ten thousand square miles, it is said to be the most
extensive woodland on the face of the globe. This trail was the worst
road to travel I have seen or expect ever to pass over. The wagons
moved as ships tossed on a stormy sea, chuck! chuck! from boulder to
boulder, without intermittence. We found delicious spring water about
noon and passed a most remarkable place later in the day. This must
have been the pit of a volcano. A few steps aside from the road you
might lean over the precipice and look straight down into a great,
round crater, so deep that it made a person dizzy. At the bottom there
was a ranch house, a small lake and a cultivated field, the whole being
apparently ten acres in area. I looked straight down on a man who was
walking near the house and appeared no larger than a little doll and
his dog seemed to be the size of a grasshopper, but we heard the dog
bark and heard the cackling of hens quite plainly. On one side of this
pit there was a break in the formation, which made this curious place
accessible by trail.

We had been advised that we would find a natural tank of rain water in
the vicinity of this place and camped there at nightfall. We turned our
stock out, but our herders did not find the promised water. Our cook
reported that there was not a drop of water in camp, as the spigot of
his water tank had been loosened by the roughness of the road and all
the water was lost. Now this would have been a matter of small
consequence if Don Juan had not been taken ill suddenly. He threw
himself on the ground and cried for water. "Agua, por Dios!" (Water,
for God's sake) he cried, "or I shall die." "Why, Don Juan," I said,
"there is no water here. I advise you to wait till moonrise when the
cattle are rested and then leave for the next watering place, which is
Beaver Head, at the foot of the mesa; we ought to reach there about ten
o'clock to-morrow morning. Surely until then you can endure a little
thirst!" "Amiga, I cannot, I am dying," moaned Don Juan, in great
distress. As I suspected that he had lost his nerve on the Navajo
reservation, I felt greatly annoyed, and when he became frantic in his
cries I promised to go down to Beaver Creek to get him a drink of
water, for I recalled to mind his little daughter who bid me farewell
with these words: "Adios, Senor Americano, I cha