old
water. The dining-room and living-room will be after the style of the
old Franciscan Mission architecture that dominates all the architecture
of the Southwest--conical arches opening from one room into another,
shut off, perhaps, by a wicket gate. Many of the ranch houses are
flanked by dozens of little portable, one-roomed bungalows, tar-paper
roof, shingle wainscot, and either white tenting or mosquito wire
halfway up; and this is by all odds the best type of room for the health
seeker who goes to New Mexico. He endangers neither himself nor others
by housing close to neighbors. In fact, the number of health seekers
living in such little portable boxes has become so great in New Mexico
that they are locally known as "tent-dwellers." It need scarcely be said
that there are dozens and dozens of ranch houses that will not take
tuberculous patients; so there is no danger to ordinary comers seeking a
holiday in the National Forests. On the other hand, there is no hardship
worked on the invalid. For a sum varying from $50 to $100, he can buy
his own ready-made, portable house; and arrangements can easily be made
for sending in meals.

[Illustration: Chili peppers drying outside pueblo dwelling. The
structure of sticks on the roof is a cage where an eagle is kept for its
feathers, which are used in religious rites]

The next surprise about the National Forests of New Mexico is the
excellence of roads and trails. You can go into the very heart of _most_
of the Forests by motor, of _all_ of the Forests by team (be sure to
hire a strong wagon); and you can ride almost to the last lap of the
highest peaks along bridle trails that are easy to the veriest beginner.
In the Pecos Forest are five or six hundred miles of such trails cut by
the rangers as their patrol route; and New Mexico has for some seasons
been cutting a graded wagon road clear across the ridges of two mountain
ranges, a great scenic highway from Santa Fe to Las Vegas, from eight to
ten thousand feet above sea level. One of the most marvelous roads in
the world it will be when it is finished, skirting inaccessible canyons,
shy Alpine lakes and the eternal snows all through such a forest of huge
mast pole yellow pine as might be the park domain of some old baronial
lord on the Rhine. This road is now built halfway from each end. It is
not clear of snow at the highest points till well on to the end of May;
but you can enter the Pecos at any season at right angle