Don't leave the Southwest without seeing Taos. It might be part of Turkey, or Persia, or India. It is the most un-American thing in America; and yet, it is the most typical of those ancient days in America, when there was no white man. Just here, before the ethnologist arises to correct me, let it be put on record that the Taos people do not consider themselves Indians. They claim descent rather from the Aztecs, or Toltecs of the South. While the Navajo and Apache and Ute legends are of a great migration from Athabasca of the North, the pueblo legend is of a coming from the Great Underworld of the South. * * * * * The easiest way to reach Taos is by the ancient city of Santa Fe. You go by rail to Servilleta, or Barrancas, then stage it out to the Indian pueblos. Better wire for your stage accommodation from the railroad. We did not wire, and when we left the railroad, we found seven people and a stage with space for only four. The railroad leads almost straight north from Santa Fe over high, clear mesas of yellow ocher covered with scrub juniper. There is little sign of water after you leave the Rio Grande, for water does not flow uphill; and you are at an altitude of 8,000 feet when you cross the Divide. You pass through fruit orchards along the river, low headed and heavy with apples. Then come the Indian villages, San Ildefonso, and Espanola, and Santa Clara, where the strings of red chile bake in the sunlight against the glare adobe. Women go up from the pools with jars of water on their heads. Children come selling the famous Santa Clara black pottery at the train windows; and on the trail across the river, you see Mexican drovers with long lines of burros and pack horses winding away into the mountains. Women and girls in bright blankets and with eyes like black beads and skin like wrinkled parchment stand round the doors of the little square adobe houses; and sitting in the shade are the old people--people of a great age, 104 one old woman numbered her years. As you ascend the Upper Mesas of the Rio Grande, you are in a region where nothing grows but pinon and juniper. There is not a sign of life but the browsing sheep and goats. Just where the train shoots in north of San Ildefonso, if you know where to look on the right, you can see the famous Black Mesa, a huge square of black basaltic rock almost 400 feet high, which was the sacred shrine of all Indians hereabouts for a hundred miles. On its crest, you can still see its prayer shrines, and the footworn path where refugees from war ran down to the river for water from encampment on the crest. Away to the left, the mountains seem to crumple up in purple folds with flat tops and white gypsum gashed precipices. One of these gashes--White Rock Canyon--marks Pajarito Plateau, the habitat of the ancient cave dwellers. On the north side of the Black Mesa, you can see the opening to a huge cave. This was a prayer shrine and refuge in time of war for the Santa