The Animals Were Duly Hobbled And
Turned Loose; I Lit A Camp Fire, Though We Had Nothing To Cook And
No
kettle for boiling water, and dirty, dusty, with every nerve and fibre of
my body weary and aching, I
Finally stretched out on the solid earth and
wooed "balmy sleep." The ride was resumed next day. We finally got
ourselves to Sinyela's camp in safety, where a sweat-bath and a swim in the
delicious waters of Havasu fully rested us.
The Hopi Trail Ascent. We decided to leave Havasu Canyon by way of the
"Make" Trail. This is the same trail as that described in the chapter on
the descent into Havasu Canyon from El Tovar, as far up as the point where
the pictured rocks appear. Here the Hopi trail turns and follows the course
of the main Havasu Canyon. Cushing counted forty-four knots in his buckskin
fringe from the village to the exit, each knot denoting an abrupt curve or
angle in the winding canyons. The Topocobya Trail descends a sheer cliff of
stupendous majesty, and the Wallapai Trail is enough to shatter the nervous
system of any but the most experienced; but the Hopi Trail ascent out of
the Canyon is different, in that, in several places, it passes through
narrow clefts, with ponderous, overhanging rocks, the whole course barely
wide enough to permit a laden mule to get through with its pack. It is an
almost vertical ascent of about twelve hundred feet which winds around and
up the clefts, up steps hacked out of the solid rock with flint axes and
hammers, by the patient hands of long-dead Indians.
The Legend of Ahaiuta. The Hopis and the Zunis believe this to be the spot
where the Zuni god; Ahaiuta, one of the twin gods of war, after the waters
of the world had arisen and overwhelmed the nations of their ancestry, and
flooded the whole earth from the far west to the Rio Grande, dug a little
outlet for the waters. The flood, finding this hole, had rushed down into
the interior of the earth, and had thus worn this terrific cleft, and the
gorge below, leaving the marks of its strife upon the banded rocks which
surrounded and hovered over us.
Now we scrambled over great rocks, then along a foot-wide trail, and at
length wound our way out along a massive bank of talus. Around at the head
of the trail, I sent Sinyela back, and started alone along the historic
trail across the plateau. The general scenery of the plateau already has
been described.
A Roundabout Drive. At this point, I prevailed upon Mr. Bass to hitch two
horses and two mules to his ambulance (which had once been a United States
Army ambulance and was used in his Arizona campaigns by General Nelson A.
Miles), and drive - a roundabout way to the northeastern slopes of the San
Francisco range, thence to the Little Colorado River, where we would again
strike the Hopi trail from Moenkopi to Oraibi.
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