After ascertaining the nature and extent of the gorge, Morning turned, and, plodding through the sand and loose rock to its entrance, resumed his journey along the base of the great wall. The ascent of the little ridge or natural road grew steeper and steeper, until at length the top was reached, and our explorer stood upon the summit of the great basaltic formation, a mile in width and ten miles in length, which forms the southwestern rim or table of the Santa Catalinas. From near the outer edge spread as grand a prospect as was ever vouschafed to the eye of mortal. Tucson, seven thousand feet below and fifteen miles away, seemed almost at the foot of the mountain. To the southeast stretched a narrow, winding ribbon of green, the homes of the Mexicans, who, with their ancestors, have for more than two centuries occupied the valley of the Santa Cruz. Farther yet to the southward the lofty Huachucas towered. Northward a higher peak of the Catalinas cut off the view, but to the southwest broad mesas and billowy hills stretched for more than a hundred and fifty miles, until at the horizon the eye rested upon the blue of the Gulf of California, penciled against an ashen strip of sky. As Morning gazed in awe and delight, there appeared in the sky, scudding from the south, flecks of cloud, chasing each other like gulls upon an ocean, and remembering that this was the rainy season, and feeling rather than knowing that a storm was about to gather, Morning retraced his steps. He had proceeded on his return to a point about five hundred yards above the mouth of the rift which he had visited on his upward journey, when the rapidly-darkening clouds and big plashes of rain drops warned him that one of the showers customary in that section in August was about to fall. Such storms are usually of brief duration, but are liable to be exceedingly violent, the water often descending literally in sheets. It would have been impossible for Morning to reach the camp where he had left the animals in time to avoid the storm, and a hollow in the basalt wall—a hollow which almost amounted to a cave—offering just here a complete shelter from the rain, which was approaching from the south, over the top of the wall, he sought the opening, and was soon seated upon a convenient rock, while his vision swept the slope to the cañon a mile below, and thence followed the meanderings of the Rillito until it vanished from sight. And the clouds grew and darkened. Like black battalions of Afrites summoned by the “thunder drum of heaven,” they trooped from distant mountains and nearer plains to gather upon the summit of the Catalinas. The south wind—now risen to a gale—swooped up the fogs from the distant gulf, and hurried them upon its mighty pinions, shrieking with delight at the burden it bore up to the summit of the basalt, above which it massed them.