In starting for Hopiland, that little island set in the ocean of the Navajo’s country, we had anything but a definite idea whether we should arrive at our destination, but we hoped for the best. We were used by now to steering our craft by desert signs, as a navigator steers his ship. The desert continually impresses one with its resemblance to the sea,--opalescent, glittering in the sun, its sands ribbed as by waves; sky and horizon meeting in unbroken monotony, and mesas floating on its surface like purple islands. We were dazed by its vast distances and always changing beauty. We made for great promontories looming up in a sea of sand; tacked and veered to the next landmark; skirted reefs of rock; and looked for windmills, arroyos and buttes to guide us as a mariner does for lighthouses and buoys. For us who had always known the restriction of well-marked, prim highways, it was a keen pleasure to rely on our newly awakened primitive faculties. For the first time we sensed the reality of expressions that the protected artificiality of cities had made valueless before. For the first time water was not a commodity which inevitably flows when a tap is turned; but the difference between life and death. Old Bible phrases became real in their vivid poetry. “Cattle upon a thousand hills,”--we passed them every day. “The shadow of a great rock in a weary land” we learned to avail ourselves of from the pitiless heat with deep gratitude. For a brief time, we had become as pastoral and elemental as David or Jacob. Keams Canyon we reached at sundown,--a tiny, jagged little place, oddly charming, with hills packed behind it and a few government buildings striding the canyon. In that easy-going land, those who directed us had taken for granted that we should be looked after, regardless or perhaps because of the fact that Hopiland has neither hotel nor boarding house in its confines. The traveler must camp or depend on private hospitality, which is not, probably because of frequent abuse, as ungrudging as it is reported to be. We could have camped, but desert touring is exhausting, and by nightfall we seldom had strength left to attempt it. We were dog-weary from the heat and bad roads, but no hospitable door opened to us, as we had been assured they would. The agent was away, and we were directed from house to house, no inmate wanting us himself, but each thinking his neighbor might. At last a man more solicitous than the rest thought the minister might take us in. And he did, most cordially. Here and there on the reservations we heard talk among traders and old settlers against the missionaries;--they were officious, or lazy, or ignorant of Indian psychology, or bigoted. Yet by far the finest hospitality we met on Indian reservations was from missionaries, and altogether we gained a general impression that they were mainly disinterested and sincere. Their work is far from remunerative, and they are resigned to constant discouragement.