Now the rains,—little showers and furious deluges,—the cliffs washing clean as they soak as sponges. The arroyo roars and boils its sudden surprising current, and each alcove of the high rocks springs its miniature silvery waterfall. Then the rare aroma of wet cedars and a thirsty soil, all parched things drinking as gluttons; while above, in a twilight sky, appear rainbows, katchinas of the heavens. Can you wonder that tramps and painters, cowpunchers and poets, return to this Empire of Enchantment? It is one of those fanciful “other places,” one of the last having an horizon. The place we’re in is always here, The other place is there. I have had something more to say of my Navajo friends, their ways and ceremonies; of the curious, shy, and altogether lovable Indian children and their schools; of that strange medley from the Civil Service grab-bag, the employees; of quarantines, and wars against disease; of the curse of the medicine-men; of the baronial traders and their frontier systems; of Indian art and industry; and too, something more of the Desert itself, its great cañons and monster monuments, the mammoth jewels of the Empire; and of those crumbling ruins in the North, beyond the rim of the Black Mountain, long-lost cities of the dead, picturing the futility of men and the vastness of desert time. But the book closes. The story of an empire cannot be compressed into one volume. In August 1919 I received orders to take charge of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, those dreamy towns along the Rio Grande, in the land of the Spanish bells. My headquarters would be at Albuquerque, but a few miles from where Coronado made his winter camp in 1540, on that long hike to Quivera. It was not until I made this announcement that I fully knew my host of desert friends. The staff gave me a farewell dinner, of course, and there was speechmaking and a lot of neighborly merriment that several times jangled off the key. You see, I had been there a long time, and whatever my faults and deficiencies, they knew them. As I have written earlier, it is hard to change czars. The people of the Desert are seldom effusive or voluble. They rode in, pairs and groups of them, to wish me good luck and to say good-bye. The Hopi tried to express his regret; the Navajo stood about diffidently for a little, and then shook hands without an effort at a word, and rode away. Those who knew me best brought little presents of rare value to one who knew their history—a basket, a painted piece of pottery, an old ceremonial bow. One of them, who liked me well enough, could not come; so he asked a missionary to write exactly as he dictated. Dear Mr. Crane,— Because I have heard that you are about to leave us I am thinking about you, and I am sorry. You have been good to us. You are a good chief.