Bewildered, we walked for five minutes to the edge of the little level ranch surrounded by high pinon-covered walls on all sides. Still no bridge. At our feet they showed us a small hole in the ground, a foot deep. Looking through it we saw a steep chasm with a tangle of cactus and trees, and at the very bottom a clear, swift stream. Unknown years ago some strange explosion had taken place through this tiny vent, creating the powerful arch beneath, which at this point seemed perilously thin, yet supported houses, cattle and men. At a crisis the accidents of Nature, like those of men, crystallize, and thereafter become unalterable. This tiny peep-hole, whim of a casual meeting of gases, would survive a thousand of our descendants. This was only one of a hundred spectacles Arizona was staging at the time. Think what a fuss the San Franciscans made of their little eruption in 1906,--and yet Arizona managed an exposition of fireworks back in the dark ages compared to which San Francisco’s was like a wet firecracker. But Arizona showed poor business judgment in letting all her Grand Canyons, natural bridges and volcanoes erupt before the invention of jitneys, railroads, motion pictures and press agents. Naturally her geologic display attracted no attention, and today you can come upon freaks of nature casually anywhere in the state, of which nobody ever heard. Even Natural Bridge, the widest of its kind in the world, is unknown to most Arizonans; many have only vaguely heard of it or confuse it with the Rainbow Bridge in Utah. Yet it is the strangest jumble of geologic freaks in any equal area, outside of Yellowstone. Standing under the arch, so broad and irregularly shaped that at no point can it be photographed to show adequately that it is a bridge, you are really on the ground floor of a four-story apartment of Nature’s building. The first floor is laid with a tumbling brown stream, flecked with white, and tiled with immense porphyry colored boulders of fantastic shapes. Exotic shrubs of tangly cactus, huge spotted eucalyptus, and firs, and myriads of dainty flowers dress the vestibule. Pools and stone tubs sculptured by Father Time invite,--oh, how they invite to bathe! The floor is speckled and flecked with sunlight which filters under the arch. Great rocks seem to float on the stream, mysteriously lighted, like Böcklin’s Island of the Dead. For half a mile you push through stubborn mesquite, wade and leap from rock to stream, finding a picture at every turn. [Illustration: GREAT ROCKS SEEM TO FLOAT ON THE STREAM, MYSTERIOUSLY LIGHTED, LIKE BOCKLIN’S ISLE OF THE DEAD.]