ip, and there is as much of interest at the
Bridge as at Taos. You don't expect to find settlers in this dim silver
underworld, do you? Well, drive a few miles up the Arroyo Hondo, where
the stream widens out into garden patch farms, and you will find as odd
specimens of isolated humans as exist anywhere in the world--relics of
the religious fanaticism of the secret lodges, of the Middle
Ages--Penitentes, or Flagellantes, or Crucifixion people, who yearly at
Lent re-enact all the sorrows of the Procession to the Cross, and until
very recent years even re-enacted the Crucifixion.

After supper we strolled out down the canyon. It is impossible to
exaggerate its beauty. Each gash is only the width of the river with
sides straight as walls. The walls are yellow and black basalt, all
spotted with red where the burning bush has been touched by the frosts.
The rivers are clear, cold blue, because they are but a little way from
the springs in the snows. Snows and clear water and frost in the Desert?
Yes: that is as the Desert is in reality, not in geography books. Below
the Bridge, you can follow the Rio Grande down to some famous hot
springs; and in this section, the air is literally spicy with the oil of
sagebrush. At daybreak, you see the water ousels singing above the
rapids, and you may catch the lilt of a mocking-bird, or see a bluebird
examining some frost-touched berries. It is October; but the
goldfinches, which have long since left us in the North, are in myriads
here.

The second day at the Bridge, we drove up the Arroyo Hondo to see the
Penitentes. It is the only way I know that you can personally visit a
people who in every characteristic belong to the Twelfth Century. The
houses of the Arroyo Hondo are very small and very poor; for the
Penitente is thinking not of this world but of the world to come. The
orchards are amazingly old. These people and their ancestors must have
been here for centuries and as isolated from the rest of the world as if
living back five centuries. The Penitente is not an Indian; he is a
peon. Pueblo Indians repudiate Penitente practices. Neither is the
Penitente a Catholic. He is really a relic of the secret lodge orders
that overran Europe with religious disorders and fanatic practices in
the Twelfth Century. Except for the Lenten processions, rites are
practiced at night. There are the Brothers of the Light--La Luz--and the
Brothers of the Darkness--Las Tinieblas. The meeting halls are