ways shimmers
above the sagebrush blue and sandy gold of the Upper Mesas--before you
hear the laughter of living waters coming down from the mountain snows.
One understands why the Indians chose the uplands; while the white man,
who came after, had to choose the shadowy bottoms of the walled-in
canyons. Someone, back in the good old days when we were not afraid to be
poetic, said something about "traveling on the wings of the morning." I
can't put in words what he meant; but you do it here--going up and up so
gradually that you don't realize that you are in the lap, not of
mountains, but of mountain peaks; breathing, not air, but ozone;
uplifted by a great weight being taken off spirit and body; looking at
life through rose-colored tints, not metaphorically, but really; for
there is something in this high rare air--not dust, not moisture--that
splits white light into its seven prismatic hues. You look through an
atmosphere wonderfully rare, but it is never clear, white light. It is
lavender, or lilac, or primrose, or gold, or red as blood according to
the hours and the mood of hours; and if you want to carry the metaphor
still farther, you may truthfully add that the hours on these high
uplands are dancing hours. You never feel time to be a heavy, slow thing
that oppresses the soul.

[Illustration: Climbing home over your neighbor's roof and bolting your
door by pulling up the ladder is customary in Taos]

As the streams laugh down from the mountains, ranches grow more and more
frequent. It is characteristic of the West that you don't cross the
_acequias_ on bridges. You cross them on two planks, with risk to your
car if the driver swerve at the steering wheel. All the houses are red
earth adobe, thick of wall to shut out both heat and cold, with a smell
of juniper wood in the fireplaces of each room. Much of this
land--nearly all of it, in fact--is owned by the Taos Indians and held
in common for pasturage and cultivation. Title was given by Spain four
centuries ago, and the same title holds to-day in spite of white
squatters' attempt to break down the law by cutting the wire of the
pasture fences and taking the case to the courts. It was in this way
that squatters broke down the title of old Spanish families to thousands
and hundreds of thousands of acres granted before American occupation.
To be sure, an American land commission took evidence on these titles,
in the quarrel between Yankee squatter and Spanish don; b