red and tacked and whipped the fagged horses on. For three hours
the hurricane lasted, and when finally it sank with an angry growl and
we came out of the fifteen miles of sand into sagebrush and looked back,
the rosy tinge of an afterglow lay on the gray pile of stone where the
Moki town crests the top of the lofty mesa.

In justice to travelers and Desert dwellers, two or three facts should
be added. Such dust storms occur only in certain spring months. So much
in fairness to the Painted Desert. Next, I have cursorily given slight
details of the Desert storm, because I don't want any pleasure seekers
to think the Painted Desert can be crossed with the comfort of a Pullman
car. You have to pay for your fun. We paid in that blinding, stinging,
smothering blast as from a furnace, from three to half past five. Women
are supposed to be irrepressible talkers. Well--we came to the point
where not a soul in the carriage could utter a word for the dust.
Lastly, when we saw that the storm was to be such a genuine old-timer,
we ought to have tied wet handkerchiefs across our mouths. Glasses we
had to keep the dust out of our eyes; but that dust is alkali, and it
took a good two weeks' sneezing and a very sore throat to get rid of it.

Of the Three Mesas and Oraibi and Hotoville, space forbids details
except that they are higher than the village at Acoma. Overlooking the
Painted Desert in every direction, they command a view that beggars all
description and almost staggers thought. You seem to be overlooking
Almighty God's own amphitheater of dazzlingly-colored infinity; and
naturally you go dumb with joy of the beauty of it and lose your own
personality and perspective utterly. We lunched on the brink of a white
precipice 1,500 feet above anywhere, and saw Moki women toiling up that
declivity with urns of water on their heads, and photographed naked
urchins sunning themselves on the baking bare rock, and stood above
_estufas_, or sacred underground council chambers, where the Pueblos
held their religious rites before the coming of the Spaniards.

Of the Moki towns, Oraibi is, perhaps, cleaner and better than the Three
Mesas. The mesas are indescribably, unspeakably filthy. At Oraibi, you
can wander through adobe houses clean as your own home quarters, the
adobe hard as cement, the rooms divided into sleeping apartments,
cooking room, meal bin, etc. Also, being nearer the formation of the
Grand Canyon, the coloring surrounding t