together different stream from the muddy Rio of the lower
levels. Here it is joined by the Arroyo Hondo, another canyon slashed
through the rocks in a deep trench--both rivers silver in the moonlight,
with a rush of rapids coming up the great height like wind in trees, or
the waves of the sea.

What a host of old frontier worthies must have pulled themselves up with
a jerk of amaze and dumb wonder, when they first came to this sheer jump
off the earth! First the mailed warriors under Coronado; then the cowled
Franciscans; then Fremont and Kit Carson and Beaubien and Governor Bent
and Manuel Lisa, the fur trader, and a host of other knights of modern
adventure.

I suppose a proper picture of the Bridge, or Arroyo Hondo, cannot be
taken; for a good one never has been taken, though travelers and artists
have been coming this way for a hundred years. The two canyons are so
close together and so walled that it is impossible to get both in one
picture except from an airship. It is as if the earth were suddenly
rent, and you looked down on that underworld of which Indian legend
tells so many wonder yarns. Don't mind wondering how you will go down!
The bronchos will manage that, where an Eastern horse would break his
neck and yours, too. The driver jams on brakes; and you drop down a
terribly steep grade in a series of switchbacks, or zigzags, to the
Bridge. It is the most spectacularly steep road I know in America. It
could not be any steeper and not drop straight; and there isn't anything
between you and the drop but your horses' good sense. It is one of the
places where you don't want to hit your horse; for if he jumps, the
wagon will not keep to the trail. It will go over taking you and the
horse, too.

But, before you know it, you have switched round the last turn and are
rattling across the Bridge. Some Mexican teamsters are in camp below the
rock wall of the river. The reflection of the figures and firelight and
precipices in the deep waters calls up all sorts of tales of Arabian
Nights and road robbers and old lawless days. Then, you pull up sharp at
the toll house for supper, as quaint an inn as anything in Switzerland
or the Himalayas. The back of the house is the rock wall of the canyon.
The front is adobe. The halls are long and low and narrow, with
low-roofed rooms off the front side only. From the Bridge you can go on
to Taos by motor in moonlight; but the whole way by stage and motor in
one day makes a hard tr