On the road between Holbrook and St. Johns, as we journeyed toward Apacheland, we stopped a few hours in the petrified forests whose fallen trunks line the road for miles. Whatever turned them to stone, at the same time burned the heart out of the surrounding country. Leprous looking erosions, sulphur colored and sickly white, make the only break in an absolutely flat landscape. An unbending road stretches miles without a change in its monotony, choking in alkali dust and twisting sandstorms. Beyond is the painted desert--bad lands which, but for the ethereal sunset colors tinting butte and mesa with unearthly glory, would be as unspeakably desolate as the rest. The forest itself lies fallen in an alkali plain. Uncountable tons of these giant fragments, waist-high, perfect to the last detail in the grain of the wood, the roughness of the bark, knot-holes and little twigs, cover the ground. The strange stone, which polishes like glass and cuts like diamonds, is nearly semi-precious, yet in this vicinity houses are paved with the blocks. We passed over a bridge whose foundation was a giant petrified tree. It was depressing, these acres and acres of stone trees, frozen in the height of their glory by the cruel Medusa, Nature. I felt the same pensive kinship of mortality with these trees one feels at Pompeii with the huddled, lava-encrusted bodies clutching their treasures. “I wonder what petrified these here trees?” exclaimed a voice behind us. We turned. If I had not known the trees were petrified before her arrival I might have held her responsible. As she stood, she might easily have turned a whole continent to stone. She might have posed for Avoirdupois, minus the poise. She wore, in addition to her figure, a gayly striped silk sweater, high-heeled French slippers, silk stockings, a jockey cap and overalls. Overalls, like boudoir caps and kimonos in Pullmans, are the approved hiking costume of the new West for both sexes. Unfortunately, there was more of her to wear overalls than there were overalls to wear.