Whence come the designs incorporated by these simple weavers into their blankets, sashes, and dresses? In this, as in basketry and pottery, the answer is found in nature. Indeed, many of their textile designs suggest a derivation from basketry ornamentation (which originally came from nature), "as the angular, curveless figures of interlaying plaits predominate, and the principal subjects are the same--conventional devices representing clouds, stars, lightning, the rainbow, and emblems of the deities. But these simple forms are produced in endless combination and often in brilliant, kaleidoscopic grouping, presenting broad effects of scarlet and black, of green, yellow, and blue upon scarlet, and wide ranges of color skilfully blended upon a ground of white. The centre of the fabric is frequently occupied with tessellated or lozenge patterns of multi-colored sides, or divided into panels of contrasting colors in which different designs appear; some display symmetric zigzags, converging and spreading throughout their length; in others, bands of high color are defined by zones of neutral tints, or parted by thin, bright lines into a checkered mosaic, and in many only the most subdued shades appear. Fine effects are obtained by using a soft, gray wool in its natural state, to form the body of the fabric in solid color, upon which figures in orange and scarlet are introduced; also in those woven in narrow stripes of black and deep blue, having the borders relieved in bright tinted meanders along the sides and ends, or with a central colored figure in the dark body, with the design repeated in a diagonal panel at each corner. "The greatest charm, however, of these primitive fabrics, is the unrestrained freedom shown by the weaver in her treatment of primitive conventions. To the checkered emblem of the rainbow she adds sweeping rays of color, typifying sunbeams; below the many-angled cloud group, she inserts random pencil lines of rain; or she softens the rigid meander, signifying lightning, with graceful interlacing, and shaded tints. Not confining herself alone to these traditional devices, she invents her own methods to introduce curious, realistic figures of common objects,--her grass brush, wooden weaving fork, a stalk of corn, a bow, an arrow, or a plume of feathers from a dancer's mask. Thus, although the same characteristic styles of weaving and decoration are general, yet none of the larger designs are ever reproduced with mechanical exactness; each fabric carries some distinct variation, some suggestion of the occasion of its making, woven into form as the fancy arose." I have thus quoted from an unpublished manuscript of one of the greatest Navaho authorities of the United States--Mr. A. M. Stephen--in order to confirm my own oft-repeated and sometimes challenged statements that the Navaho weaver finds in nature her designs, and that in most of her better blankets there is woven "some suggestion of the occasion of its making."