The Sun Shone Unhindered; The Rain Beat With Pitiless Fury; The Winds Swept Unhampered; The Snows Piled Up Undeterred Over The Whole Plateau And Canyon Country.

It was plateau and canyon, canyon and plateau; red rock, gray rock, creamy rock, yellow, pink, blue, chocolate, carmine, crimson rock, soft rock, hard rock; sunshine, shadow, wind and quietude; winter, summer, autumn, spring-and that was all!

A lifeless world, as yet unprepared for insect, reptile, beast, man, flower or tree. Perhaps a solitary sea-bird with strong pinion flew over it, and gazed into its lifeless depths with wonder, or a dove flew from some earlier and habitable land over this wonderful mass of rock, and returned to its nest and its mate. But no olive or other leaf was in its bill.

*An insect that looks like a tiny dried wisp of hay, well-known in Arizona.

And so the land was born, and rested; while silence, sunshine and solitude brooded over it.

Creation of Soil and Verdure. But in the course of ages, soil was created by the disintegration of the rocks by the weather and the atmosphere, seeds were blown in from regions where flowers and plants bloomed, or were carried in by birds, and later distributed by the four-footed creatures. Then verdure sprang into life; the gentle grasses and flowers began to cover the slopes and level places where soil had gathered, and the trees came to sway and swing in the breezes, and sing their songs of coming life to the hitherto barren rocks.

Fossils of Sea Creatures. Yet they had not been altogether lifeless. Many of the rocks had known life, but it was not insect, reptile, bird, beast or man life; neither did they known anything of grass, flower, shrub or tree life. In the far-away ages, when they were being deposited deep under the surface of the Eocene sea, they saw vast monsters floating in the salty deep, and later, fishes of all sizes, and even great beds of waving sea-moss and ferns floated back and forth, as the tides ebbed and flowed. And fishes and ferns, monsters and moss were occasionally caught in the flowing deposits of lime and sand and silt and clay, and were embedded in their mass. Thus imprisoned, their otherwise forgotten life and history is told to the ages of man that were as yet unborn.

Coming of Man. But now the new life is coming! With verdure and animal life in existence, these hitherto uninhabitable regions became capable of sustaining human life. And the restless spirit of the human race, wherever and howsoever it originated, drove bands of men and women into this region.

Who were they? What were they like? Whence did they come? How long did they stay? Whither did they go? are questions one naturally asks in regard to these first discoverers and inhabitants. If I were to say "I do not know," I would be saying what every other thinking man is compelled to say.

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