We therefore chose the shorter way, to learn later that the Douglas-Bisbe route which we discarded was one of the most beautiful drives in the country. Yet we ourselves moved into a theater of loveliness. Saw-toothed ranges, high and stormy, snow-topped, shadowed our trail. The wide amphitheater of our golden valley was encircled with mountains of every size and color; blue, rosy, purple, and at sunset pure gold and transparently radiant. The gray sage turned at sun-down to lavender; mauve shadows lengthened on the desert floor; gorges of angry orange and red cliffs gave savage contrast to the delicate Alpine glow lighting white peaks; a cold, pastel sky framed a solitary star, and frosty air, thinned in its half-mile height to a stimulating sharpness, woke us keenly to life. We felt the enchantment that Arizona weaves from her gray cocoon toward sunset, and wondered at eyes which could look on it all, and see only sand and cactus. Show them the unaccustomed, and they would doubtless have been appreciative enough. A green New England farm with running brooks and blossoming orchards would have spelled Paradise to them, as this Persian pattern of desert did to us; beauty to the parched native of Arizona is an irrigation ditch, bordered by emerald cottonwoods. If I tint these pages with too many sunsets, it is not from unawareness of my weakness, but because without them a description of Arizona does not describe. In the afternoon hours, between four and eight, the country wakes and glows, and has its moment, like a woman whose youth was plain but whom middle age has touched with charm and mystery. Not to speak of the sunsets of Arizona, till the reader is as saturated with their glory as is the traveler, is to leave the heart of the country unrevealed. From Willcox to Lordsburg we realized there was more than jest in the remark of our old-timer concerning “dead soldiers.” All the way through that uninhabited desert, we picked our road through avenues of discarded flat bottles of familiar shape, turning all shades of amethyst under the burning rays of the sun. It is an odd effect of the sun on glass here in the desert that it slowly turns a deeper and deeper violet. The desert-wise can tell the date a bottle was discarded from its hue. I was told that one man made a fortune by ripening window-glass in this manner, and selling it to opticians at a fancy price. It may have been a similar industry which lined our path with empty bottles. It must have been so, for Arizona had been “dry” for three years.