The Grand Canyon of Arizona | Page 9

nearly seven thousand feet. During the early summer, before the rains, it is often barren and desolate.
Yet at all seasons the slopes of Williams Mountain are charming and beautiful. The tender and vivid tones of the evergreen trees that cover it render it a restful and attractive feature of the landscape.
Havasu Creek. Havasu Creek flows above ground for several miles, then disappears to make a subterranean stream, which finally emerges in wonderful volume, in a thousand springs, in the heart of Havasu Canyon, just above the village of the Indians of the same name. Crossing it, four miles from Williams, the railway enters a belt of cedars and junipers, passes Red Lake,--a volcanic sink-hole, which, at rare intervals, is filled with water.
Deer and Antelope. For a dozen miles the road passes through a series of charming parks, where deer and antelope are sometimes seen. While driving his train through one of these parks, early in December, 1907, S. O. Miller, one of the engineers of the Grand Canyon Railway, saw a majestic black-tailed deer running a little ahead of his engine. Suddenly the beautiful creature turned, tried to cross the track, and was instantly killed. Stopping the train, Miller got help, and it took four men to lift the dead animal and place it on the engine. The skin and head were mounted. The animal is so perfect and royal a specimen that the owner says a thousand dollars could not purchase it from him.
Miller rather enjoys the distinction of being the only known deer hunter of the West who has chased his game and killed it with a locomotive.
Surrounding Mountains. One should not fail to look back, as the train journeys along, for fine, full views of the Volcanic Mountains,--the San Franciscos, Kendricks, Sitgreaves and Williams. The two former are sharp, pyramidal-shaped masses, towering from nine thousand to twelve thousand feet into the blue, while the two latter are well wooded and rounded, though volcanic,--Williams Mountain having seven distinct crests at different altitudes.
When about ten miles out, Mount Floyd, another volcanic pile, rises above the plain on the west. Two sharp peaks come in sight, and later, long ridges of deep blue stretch away to the north. These are the Blue Ridge, and are formed of lava which has flowed from Mount Floyd.
Ant-Hills. To many it is a novel sight to see the ant-hills that dot the plain all the way along. These tiny creatures build their homes underground, carrying out all the small pieces of rock that are in their way. By and by they build up quite a mound of these stones, and, it is on these that the Navaho Indians often find the garnets, rubies and peridots they offer for sale. Around the mounds the ground is stripped bare by the busy ants, who remove every particle of vegetation in a radius of two or three feet.
Desert Rains. If it is early summer when you ride over this region, do not be deceived by the barrenness of the thirsty country (as you leave the cedars), and the dry, cloudless sky, and imagine that it never rains. I have been here in the midst of such rain storms as I have rarely experienced elsewhere. When the showers do fall, they often come with a fullness that is as distressing as is the want of water during the dry season.
Red Butte. Twenty-nine miles out, near the station of Valle, is the big bridge, some fifty feet high and three hundred feet long, over a branch of the Spring Valley Wash; and here Red Butte becomes a prominent landmark on the right. This is known to the Havasupai Indians as Hue-ga-da-wi-za, the Mountain of the Clenched Fist, for this is its appearance when seen at certain angles. It is a remnant of the Permian sandstone that once covered the whole Grand Canyon region, and its brilliant red, when illuminated by the vivid Arizona sun, explains why for so many years it has been a prominent landmark of the plateau. It stands boldly forth on the eastern edge of what was undoubtedly once a portion of the vast Eocene lake, the drainage way of which helped to cut down the Canyon we are so soon to see.
Interesting stories might be told of Red Butte and its region. The Havasupais have a tradition that many years ago a large spring of water flowed from near its base, but in the great convulsion of nature which changed the current of the waters of Havasu Creek the spring disappeared, and never has been seen since. The presence of a number of quaking aspens in the region, however, denotes that water is still there. It also has been claimed that documents on file in Tucson prove that silver mining was extensively carried on here