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Show SOTSffiS m THEE J 4. - , ' "i i r 11 " - a -, ' "',.: w - .j ''if,'? ' .' - ,.y , ' SS YJW Of C?Af CAyOV OME three hundred and WSe) eighty miles west of Albu-fMW Albu-fMW querque, N. M., on the main Kt line of the railroad Is sltu-ated sltu-ated the little city of Williams, Wil-liams, Ariz. The place received it prosaic name from the noted pioneer scout, Bill WilliamB, who lies buried at the foot of Bill Williams mountain' nearby. The city has a picturesque location, lo-cation, 6,750 feet above sea level, and Is at the Junction of the Grand Canyon Can-yon railroad which leads to the wonderful won-derful erosion, some 60 miles north. The Grand canyon is acknowledged to be incomparably the world's grandest grand-est natural wonder. Within the gigantic gigan-tic stretch of the canyon, varying from five to twelve miles In width, the Colorado river and Its tributaries wind their ways for over 200 miles. Most of the walls of the canyon rise to the Incredible height of 5,000 to 6,000 feet, and display every variety of curving rldge and ravine, of fell precipice and rocky gorge. Fully 100 tourists, en route to California, Cali-fornia, daily switch off here for a view of the Titan of Chasms the most gigantic example of erosion on the globe. The marble and gigantic walls of this stupendous water-worn trench are from 1,000 to 6,500 feet high, often very precipitous and perpendicular, Bculptured into "wildly fantastic forms, and brilliantly tinted In deep red and yellow, brown and gray, purple and black. The canyon Is about 240 miles long; and, through the rocky gorge, the work of centuries, the turbulent river winds Its way with varying descent. de-scent. The channel contracts and then expands a tortuous ribbon of silver, whose boundaries of objects, though gigantic in size, are lost to sight In the magnificent environments. Scene of Splendor. In some places these huge cliffs fairly fair-ly overhang the water, and the boatman, boat-man, looking upward, can see but a narrow strip of blue sky. Frequently clouds gather over the top of the gorge, and one floats along In darkness. dark-ness. From the rim above, the rushing rush-ing and the whitening of the waters below may be seen, but the distance is so great that no sound is ever heard. Stolid, indeed, is he who can front the awful scene and view its unearthly splendor of color and form without quaking. This labyrinth of immense architectural forms is endlessly varied in design, fretted with ornamental devices, de-vices, festooned with lace-like webs formed from talus from the upper cliffs and painted with every color known to the palette In pure transparent tones of marvelous delicacy. Never was a picture more harmonious; har-monious; never a flower more exquisitely ex-quisitely beautiful. The Grand canyon country is not only the hugcst, but the most varied and instructive specimen of earth building and destruction on the globe. Nowhere else on earth Is there such an example of deep gnawing gnaw-ing waters or of water high-carving. New York may boast of its Niagara; California, Its Yosemite; Kentucky, its Mammoth Cave; Virginia, its Natural Bridge, and Wyoming, its geysers all wonderfully elaborate and grand In their way, but here, In an altltudlnous mesa. Is a chasm that would hide them all and then be but partially decorated, much less filled. Wondert of Chalcedony Park. While the Grand canyons are the greatest, they are by no means the only objects of Interest In this land of wonders. With Its castle domes, thumb buttes and solitary sugar-loaf peaks; Its mesas of bare rock, beds of ashes or leagues of yellow and vermilion sands, Arizona abounds In the strange and the wonderful. Chalcedorry park, in Apache county, covers 2,000 acres, amid a vast desert of sandstone and lava, with the fragments of thousands of gigantic pines and cedars brought Pompeii Pillar. by flood or glacier and changed by nature's chemistry into brilliant minerals min-erals of exquisite colors. At intervals, one sees on every side gulches torn out of the solid rock by the ceaseless grinding of flint on flint, exposing broken logs of every conceivable length and size, In all shapes and colors Imaginable. Throw over all the blazing rays of the southern sun and you are surrounded with jewels, miles and miles of them, so brilliant as o dazzle the eyes and make Aladdin's fabled cave a rushlight in comparison. Onyx, chalcedony, carnellan, jasper, agate and every variety of delicately veined marble, with masses of tur-' tur-' quolse, of garnet, of rose quartz, of topaz, of emerald all bewilder ana surprise the beholder. And this is not all In many localities locali-ties along the shelving terraces of th mountains, under beetling projections of the strata are to be seen the most elaborate of the quaint cliff dwellings, divided Into several compartments by cemented walls. The Tonto basin has the largest natural bridge in the world, being 200 feet high, 600 feet wide, an arch six feet thick, with an orchard on its top and miles of stalactite stalac-tite caves under its abutments. Here is the famous yucca plant, growing as a tree, the fruit of which the Indians and Mexicans use for food, its stemsl for soap, and from the leaves make horse blankets, ropes, twine, nets, hats, shoes and mattresses. Here, too, is the wonderful Fish-hook cactus, that, during the moist season, stores up a large quantity of water and when the top is removed and a hol low Is made by scooping out some of the soft Inner part, immediately fills, with cool, refreshing water, thus be-, ing the means of saving many lives. The Qila Monster. In this sun-scorched land Is the, largest and only poisonous lizard in America the Gila monster. It often attains a length of three feet and in appearance Is very repulsive, being covered with scales. The general color is black, marked with yellowish Interspaces. The tail is cylindrical and clumsy and the movements of the animal are like those of the young alligator. Its bite, though not always fatal, is very dangerous, paralyzing the action of the heart. Down near the Gila river is a horned toad farm, from which more than a thousand of the little reptiles are sold annually to individuals and to zoological societies. Near Phoenix is the largest ostrich ranch in America. A veritable ostrich os-trich village Is laid out in the reclaimed re-claimed desert lands, the main and side streets being all named and numbered. Most of the propagation Is done by Incubation. When hatched they are almost as large as full grown chickens, and at six months they are six feet high. When the ostriches are about four years old they are mated; and, If left to themselves, the hen bird will deposit eggs at the rate of one a day for a month in succession in a nest hollowed out of the sand. The ostrich hen sits on the eggs by day and the male bird at night. One of the most pleasing natural curiosities of. Arizona is the pool ol water known as Montezuma's well It Is situated 15 miles northeast of the old abandoned military post ol Camp Verde. The well is 250 feet in diameter and the clear, pure Water ia about sixty feet below the surface ol the surrounding country. The pool ba a uniform depth of 80 feet of watei except In one place, apparently about six feet square, where the sounding line went down 500 feet without touching bottom. The sides of the well are honeycombed with caves and tunnels, permitting sightseers to descend de-scend to the water's edge. |