From Bass Camp, kept by William Bass, one of the pioneer guides of the Canyon, it is twenty odd miles by an uncertain wagon trail to Hilltop, for which we started the next morning. Very few of those thousands who visit Grand Canyon yearly even know of the existence of Havasupai Canyon, whose starting point is Hilltop. Fewer visit it. Within its high, pink walls is a narrow, fertile valley, watered by a light blue ribbon of water,--the Land of the Sky Blue water, celebrated in the popular song by Cadman, the home of a little known and very neglected tribe of Indians, the Havasupai. Havasupai means literally Children of the Blue Water. It is a fairy vale, with grottoes and limestone caverns, seven cataracts, three of them higher than Niagara, jungles of cacti, mines of silver and lead, springs running now above, now beneath the earth’s surface, groves of tropical and semi-tropical fruit, in a summer climate as moist and warm as the interior of a hothouse. [Illustration: THE LAND OF THE SKY-BLUE WATER, HAVASUPAI CANYON, ARIZONA.] We reached this heaven over an unimproved trail so nearly vertical that had it been any steeper our heads would have preceded our feet. Sometimes our horses balked, and had to be pulled forward by the bridle, the more nervous becoming panicky, and trying to turn back. It takes a bad trail to make a Western broncho do that. Frequently we had to dismount, and avoiding their hoofs, urge them to leap obstructing boulders. Except for the usual mesquite and sage, the trail was barren of vegetation, and the sun found us out and scourged us. Old travelers will speak of Havasupai Canyon as the hottest resort in this world, with even odds on the next. We rejoiced when, an hour later, we rested under a jutting ledge of cliffs where springs called Topocoba made a malodorous pool which had been fouled by many wild horses. Trees and overhanging rocks gave us moderate relief from the burning sun. We reclined, panting, while the horses’ packs were loosened and they made friends with a band of Indian horses which roam the Canyon. This oasis is one of the last links in the story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the horror of the fifties. Few know that when John Lee escaped by what afterward was named Lee’s Ferry into the Grand Canyon, and thence by some devious route then known only to himself, and even now known to very few, to this refuge, he subsisted here for nearly two years on what he could shoot and trap while Federal officers scoured Utah for him. He found a rich vein of lead which is still unworked, and by melting ore from it traded it to the Navajos for ammunition. He finally worked his way back to Lee’s Ferry, where he was recognized and captured. I was told that he was a relative,--I believe an uncle,--of Gen. Robert E. Lee.