abounding dances and thanksgiving. At Tuba itself, there is not much for the casual visitor, except a couple of Indian trading establishments and a Government Boarding School with its concomitant buildings connected with the Agency of the Western Navajo Reservation. The region roundabout, however, includes enough points of local interest to occupy a two or three weeks’ vacation very pleasantly. Accommodations are obtainable at a trader’s or one of the Government houses, and saddle horses may be hired from the Indians. Some 65 miles to the north are certain remarkably fine pueblo- or Cliff dwelling-ruins, known as Betata Kin and Keet Seel, in Marsh Pass.[75] Twenty or thirty miles south of Flagstaff is a region of unique interest, known as the Oak Creek Valley, whither Flagstaffians motor in season to fish for trout and enjoy a bit of Arcady. There are a public resort or two and a number of ranches in the valley, tributary to which is some of the wildest scenery in the Southwest. In adjacent cañons, whose sides often rise an almost sheer 800 to 1000 feet, are the ruined habitations of a prehistoric people (probably ancestors of certain existing Hopi clans)—cliff houses, cavate dwellings and fortified eminences, the last advantageously adopted by the Apaches in the wars of half a century ago. The dominant color of the rock is bright red, frequently in horizontal bands, and has gained the region the popular appellation of “The Red Rock Country.” The cañon walls and outstanding rock masses have been worn by the elements into columns, minarets, steeples, temples and other architectural semblances such as are shown surpassingly in the Grand Cañon. Indian pictographs abound—some prehistoric, some evidently of modern Apache doing. Dr. J. W. Fewkes, the scientific discoverer of the region a quarter of a century ago, thought himself justified in comparing it to the Garden of the Gods, than which it is much more extended.[76] CHAPTER XII THE GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO RIVER IN ARIZONA From Williams, on the Santa Fe’s transcontinental line, a branch runs due north across 65 miles of the great Colorado Plateau and lands the traveler at the very rim of the Grand Cañon—one of the most enjoyable, most novel, most awakening sights among the Southwest’s marvels. Even if your arrival be at darkest midnight, you will _feel_ the nearness of that awful void in the unseen—a strange and humbling experience. For accommodations you have the choice of American plan and what passes in the wilderness for luxury at the big El Továr Hotel,[77] or of lodging yourself more economically but comfortably enough in cabin or tent at the nearby Bright Angel Camp with meals _á la carte_ at the Harvey Café. Then you will want to know what to see.