"America lacks the picturesque." Did the ancient dwelling of the Stone Age sound to you as if it lacked the picturesque? I could direct you to fifty such picturesque spots in the Southwest alone. There is the Enchanted Mesa, with its sister mesa of Acoma--islands of rock, sheer precipice of yellow _tufa_ for hundreds of feet--amid the Desert sand, light shimmering like a stage curtain, herds exaggerated in huge, grotesque mirage against the lavender light, and Indian riders, brightly clad and picturesque as Arabs, scouring across the plain; all this reachable two hours' drive from a main railroad. Or there are the three Mesas of the Painted Desert, cities on the flat mountain table lands, ancient as the Aztecs, overlooking such a roll of mountain and desert and forest as the Tempter could not show beneath the temple. Or, there is the White House, an ancient ruin of Canyon de Chelly (Shay) forty miles from Fort Defiance, where you could put a dozen White Houses of Washington. "But," your European protagonist declares, "I don't mean the ancient and the primeval. I mean the modern peopled hamlet type." All right! What is the matter with Santa Fe? Draw a circle from New Orleans up through Santa Fe to Santa Barbara, California; and you'll find old missions galore, countless old towns of which Santa Fe, with its twin-towered Cathedral and old San Miguel Church, is a type. Santa Fe, itself, is a bit of old Spain set down in mosaic in hustling, bustling America. There is the Governor's Palace, where three different nations have held sway; and there is the Plaza, where the burros trot to market under loads of wood picturesque as any donkeys in Spain; and there is the old Exchange Hotel, the end of the Santa Fe Trail, where Stephen B. Elkins came in cowhide boots forty years ago to carve out a colossal fortune. At one end of a main thoroughfare, you can see the site of the old Spanish Gareta prison, in the walls of which bullets were found embedded in human hair. And if you want a little Versailles of retreat away from the braying of the burros and of the humans, away from the dust of street and of small talk--then of a May day when the orchard is in bloom and the air alive with the song of the bees, go to the old French garden of the late Bishop Lamy! Through the cobwebby spring foliage shines the gleam of the snowy peaks; and the air is full of dreams precious as the apple bloom.