THROUGH THE STATES

Taranaki Daily News, 16 April 1932, Page 13 (Supplement)

THROUGH THE STATES

THE CANYON COUNTRY

(By

Monte Barak,

M.A., Ph.D.—No. III.)

Santa Fe has a curious polyglot appearance, a combination of . the Indian Spanish and American influences manifesting itself in the architecture and picturesque people in the streets. ■Some of the largest “dude” ranches—socalled because they are used by people from the East who are trying to resuscitate their red corpuscles—m the West are situated in the canyons near Santa ■Fe. We had here our first real glimpse of the West— cowboys in their picturesque garb riding magnificent horses, etc. Santa Fe is also interesting as bein<r in the centre of a region which was inhabited by ancient cliff-dwellers, and in which there are still some of the largest Indian reservations in America. The Hopi, Mohave and Navajo tribes all live here. We drove one day to “Pon rr e,” where there are some of the best-preserved remains of cliff dwellings. It is an extraordinary sight—a precipitous hill rising above the wild surrounding country and commanding a view for hundred's of miles in all directions. The dwellings, which consisted sometimes of a whole suite of rooms with adequate ventilation and a chimney through the roof, were hewn out of the top of a perpendicular cliff, hundreds of feet in height. From Santa Fe we ran down the Rio Grande Valley to Alberquerque, through a sinuous verdant oasis whose narrow fringe of pasture ended abruptly in the desert. The road from Alberquerque passed through some marvellously rugged mountain country. At . Gallup we crossed the Continental Divide —7500 ft. —and just before Williams, where the road forks north to the Grand Canyon, we climbed another high mountain pass. ■Shortly after Gallup we came to the most southern fringe of the Painted Desert, which stretches north into Colorado and Utah. It really was a magnificent sight—vast stretches of arid, rocky desert with jagged, precipitous outerops on every side; tumbled masses of rock, of every hue and colour, blues, reds, purples, blacks and sombre grew and, except for occasional black tufts of mesquite, not a vestige of growth of any kind. . That night we pitched our tent in a barren, rocky , plain of denudation called the “Petrified Forest,” where a vast forest had 'been successively covered with a deep layer of sedimentary deposit, converted by pressure and heat into hard, brittle stone and then laid bare of its covering by rivers and rain. There we were joined by Spooner and Humphrey —two Commonwealth Fund Fellows from Harvard, and they were with us from then till we finally parted at Glacier Park.

There were several Navajo Indian reservations in this section, with trading posts displaying wonderful collections of Indian handicraft —baskets, pottery, and those beautiful Navajo mats and rugs. When we arrived at Flagstaff, just South of the Grand Canyon, a gigantic rodeo and Indian “Pow-wow was in progress. Unfortunately we missed the grand parade, but the town that day would have made a marvellous setting for a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. The streets were crowded with cowboys and cowgirls in red, orange, purple and blue skirts, broad-brimmed sombreros, etc., and Indians with long black plaits, ear-rings and rawhide mocassins. Everyone was riding a magnificent horse with silver ornamented bridles and huge western saddles.

At the Grand Canyon we had our first experience of what is probably the most efficient U.S. Government 'Service, the National Parks Service. These National Parks, of which we visited seven, are really superb. 'Wherever there is something of outstanding scenic merit the Government has set aside a large area —as much as 3000 square miles in the case of Yellowstone Park —and converted it into a National Park. Conditions in these parks are always firstclass, and they had the best-paved roads (in the ease of Glacier Park the roads for miles outside the park had been improved, too) and there was always adequate provision for every class of tourist; first-class and expensive hotels for luxury-lovers, tourist cabins for the “middle” class -who might want something cheaper, and. camping grounds tor those who had their own tents. Authorised camping spaces were always provided with good drinking fountains, a wash-room with shower and sink, etc., and a pile of wood for camp-fires. The Grand Canyon I regarded as one of the spectacles of the tour. The canyon was formed by the rapid-flowing Colorado river which, owing to successive elevations of the 'basin through which it flows, has chiselled out a tortuous valley a mile or more deep, with almost perpendicular walls. This region is practically rainless so there is little denudation except by the river, and the walls of the valley are almost sheer. Owing to the tortuous winding of the river and the apparently spasmodic elevations of the basin, the canyon is like an irregularly shaped channel, very wide at the top with frequent jutting shoulders and here and there a flat-topped ■peak poking up from the valley floor. The rim is now in a plateau, 7000 feet above sea-level, from which the river is scarcely visible, but from a point' where the canyon curves down from the north it is possible to look along it and to see the muddy yellow stream crawling along about a mile below. Like the Painted Desert, the colours of the Canyon are beautiful—pinks, reds, browns, blacks, purples outcropping in the same indiscriminate abandon. Seen in the moonlight, as we saw it for the first time, with all its colours and contours softened in the silvery light and shadows even deeper and more mysterious looking, the canyon must be included among the word’s wonders. We did not do very much at the Canyon. Of course, it is much too immense to bridge at that point. There is a bridge some 50 miles to the north. (But there are very attractive drives along the south rim, and one gets from them a marvellous kaleidoscope of changing colours and contours both of the can von itself and . also of the desert which ■stretches sombrely away to the northeast. Energetic people walk to the bottom —two of our party did—-but I discovered that the noon temperature at the bottom with the sun beating in and no breeze blowing was about 130 degrees F, so I decided discretion was the better part of valour. We began here our investigations into the social life of American pleasure resorts by going to a public dance, ,Jt was really one of the most colourful moments of the trip —tough-looking cowboys with highheeled boots and spurs, Japanese cooks, waitresses rubbing- shoulders with all the “elite” from the magnificent hotel; the atmosphere was one of pretty good joie-de-vivre. (To be continued.)