are going to hunt and camp and climb. The Canadian Rockies, Glacier National Park, Mt. Rainier, and Colorado are, of course, only suitable for a summer holiday. If you are going for a winter holiday you must go to the yellow-pine forested mountains of the Desert, although it will be news to the globe-trotting American to be told there are forested snow-capped mountains in the Desert. Here, if you want to avoid $5.00 a day for hotel, or $5.00 a day for a camp outfit, you would better get in touch with the forest ranger of the district, as all these regions are under the administration of the Forestry Department. The local ranger will probably place you at some little mountain inn where you will not spend more than $1.50 a day; or, if you prefer it, he may rent you a tent and a $1.50 camp stove, and you can forage for yourself. You can sometimes hire tented wagons and meander with your family over the mountain trails for a month. I have met families so holidaying, journeying from Colorado to Wyoming, or from New Mexico to Montana, camping at night where they pleased, fishing where they found trout streams, and hunting according to open season. On such a trip you will spend less money in a summer than in a European hotel in a month.

For motoring-let it be put down here explicitly-there is not a region of scenic splendor in the West where you cannot travel to the very edge in a motor. A scenic motor highway, most of it above cloud line, now runs from Texas to Colorado. For color and wonder and picturesqueness and out-of-doors, and an atmosphere that is sheer tonic, nothing can beat the Painted Desert and the Grand Canyon. For canoeing nothing

491

excels the blue rivers and lakes in that land of sky-water and green forests, Canada.

How are you to negotiate the Desert? Can you plunge right in? That is exactly what you have to do, but do it, of course, under the guidance of a forest ranger or local stage driver. Never attempt the Desert alone. Wind storms may hide the trail under dust fine as flour, and your guide must know where to find water springs. In the Desert are ranch houses where you can board at $2.00 a day; or, if you take in

WATERED BY THE SNOWCAPS

your, own provisions, you can sleep under your own tent, under the stars, or in one of the prehistoric caves, and the cost of your trip will be exactly what you make it. I have stayed at ranch houses, slept under tents, and camped in prehistoric caves. In no case did the cost exceed $2.00 a day. I never lived in London for a single day at that figure. Near Santa Fé in New Mexico, also off the Gila River in the southern part of the State, are prehistoric caves, warm and high and dry, where you may lodge safe from disturbance of former tenants, whose mummied remains date back eight thousand years. Deer dodge through the thickets of yellow pine below your eerie doorway. You can hear the foxes and wolves bark, bark, bark up close to the snowy peaks. The mountain stream purls in its rocky bed. A wild turkey leads her shy brood from berry bush to berry bush; but naught molests you, for the ascent to these caves is by a narrow ladder, which you draw up after you, or by stairs hewn out of the solid rock too steep for a marauder's intrusion. In many of the cave regions you can obtain meals at near-by ranch houses.

On canoe trips in Canada, it need scarcely be told here, you must not ven

ture rapids without a good Indian guide. That guide you can obtain at $2.00 a day, and if you are a canoeman you will need him only for the rapids. It is cheaper to buy a canoe than to hire an outfitter, for if you keep your canoe in good shape you can sell it at cost at the end of your trip. Food you will carry in a tin box, proof against ants and insects. Your grub box ought not to exceed a cost of $15 a month for each member of your camp. Do not take a small canoe. Take a big Klondiker that will not rock in turbulent waters. I used one such on a trip of fifteen hundred miles and sold it at cost-$80-at the end of the trip.

The baneful lies which keep Americans from seeing their own land have all been met now but one-the most brazen of them all-that "America lacks the picturesque, the historic, the human." What are people thinking about who say that, I wonder? Are they train travelers who have dashed across the prairie from water tank to water tank, never going once to the wonders of the Back Country? Who would judge Europe from the back yards one sees from train windows? Why are legends of Mary Queen of Scots any more thrilling than the legend of the Spanish commander's

daughter down at Ft. Barrancas, Pensacola, who was captured by the pirates and plunged into the sea in sight of her father? Are Copt shepherds in Egypt more picturesque than descendants of the Aztecs herding countless moving' masses of sheep on the lilacmisty mesas of the Painted Desert? At Whitehall in London is a dingy old building where the Stuarts rioted and. lost. At Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a dingy old building where eighty different governors of three different nations have ruled.

The honest truth is that Americans have not yet discovered the picturesqueness of their own land. I think of the Alamo down in San Antonio, Texas, dyed with the blood of heroes. I think of lonely crosses on the far rivers of the North, marking where this, that, or the other explorer laid down his life. You find them on the Saskatchewan, on Lake Winnipeg, on the Lake of the Woods.

And then there comes another scene. It is the Desert-incense and frankincense, resin of pines and cedar smells, smoke in the hazy lilac sunlight. Snow shines opal from the far mountain peaks. A silver bell tinkles somewhere, and the flocks come to the watering pools led by maidens as in the days of Jacob; and the maidens "draw water from the wells" and carry the water in jars on their heads,

daughters of the Desert, bronze statues of perfect poise and perfect grace. A winged horseman spurs past, hair tied back by a red scarf, sash of rainbow colors. Strings of red chile hang against the sun-baked houses, and old women weave baskets in the sun like the Fates. Suddenly the mountains. open in an amphitheater to the fore, and there swims into your ken what is neither of heaven nor earth-white, spotless, quiescent, twin-towered, with lions supporting the arches of the roofed piazzas - a cathedral San Xavier Mission in the midst of the Desert. It might be a palace of Spain, or of India. Inside, behold paintings of Christ, of the Virgin, of the Wise Men, which for seventy years existed unknown to Americans-dreams of faith wrought into the very fabric of barbarism-the heritage of a generation which knows neither the dreams nor the faith; but it stands there in the Desert, shimmering, spotless, white, a thing unearthly of visions and dreams.

Does America lack the picturesque? Do not repeat the ancient lie! Go and see! And that is what the war is doing for America. It is bringing us home to discover the charm and to explore the wonder of our own land; and it is bringing us to our knees to thank God for what we have.