CHAPTER XVII

THE PETRIFIED FOREST OF ARIZONA

In the morning I patched up the broken petrol pipe as well as I could with insulation tape, and started again on my way. I had to do forty miles before I should see a soul--forty miles before breakfast could be thought of.

It was as well that I had stopped where I did the night before. The road twisted around precipitous bends and climbed up rough rocky slopes into the mountains. Down on the other side we found ourselves in a great sandy plain, stretching due west and bounded by parallel ranges of rugged mountains. There were frequent washouts and frequent spills. In places the little streamlets that flowed from the mountain sides cut great chasms across the road, sufficient to crush one's wheels if one leapt into them at too great a speed.

Magdalena is a typical cow-boy town. In the heart of ranching country and hundreds of miles from anything but a few similar towns, it was in the early days (before prohibition) one of the "warmest" places in the West. Cow-boy outfits are seen advertised at all of the few "Stores," but there has been one big change--the notorious saloons are no longer. New Mexico adopted prohibition several years before its universal approval. Consequently Magdalena had had ample time to settle down by the time of my arrival.

I was directed to a "C'fay" that had the reputation of providing the best meal in the town. I pushed open its swing doors and beheld a picture of cleanliness and tidiness. The tables were all spick and span in their clean white tablecloths and not a vestige of dirt was visible anywhere.

The small boys of the town displayed a lively interest in me as I disported myself with my camera at the expense of their public buildings (to be exact, one wooden church). "Look at 'is boots, Jem," said one. "Looks like as though he's a gor-dem buck-jumper." "Aye, but 'is pants don't look ter be the right stuff, Joe."

I left them wondering and fell upon the trail once more. A few miles out I came to a "round-up" of steers. There were ten or twelve cow-boys on horseback, and some 5,000 or 6,000 steers grouped together in a large dense mass, blocking the road altogether. "Tough guys, those cow-boys," I remarked to myself and pretended to ignore them. But I couldn't help thinking what MIGHT happen if I barged into one of their animals or if for any reason they didn't like the look of my face!

Slowly, very slowly, the great mass of cattle moved, like a tide sweeping over the plain. Carefully I picked my way along and felt relieved when I left them right behind. I opened out and prepared for a long weary jaunt. The next town of any kind was ninety miles away.

The first thirty were dead flat but hard going. There had evidently been considerable rain recently. Emaciated mud-holes were now rock-hard contortions in the road. Often I rode on the prairie in preference.

Another thing was evident. There had been a great drought the previous year. Ranching is impossible without water, and even now, in spite of the recent rains, could be seen here and there a great lake-bed completely dried up. Nothing remained but a great mass of sun-baked hoof-marked mud, and here and there a skeleton lying upon it. The ranches of New Mexico are of huge size and cover enormous areas. True, a few good years mean a fortune to the rancher, but one bad one means ruin. Hundreds of ranches had been ruined the previous year, I found, and several thousand head of cattle had died from the drought. As I passed along, their skeletons lay strewn at the roadside, sometimes singly, sometimes in groups of a dozen or more. Hardly a refreshing sight for a poor innocent motor-cyclist!

At the end of the thirty mile stretch we entered hilly, thickly-wooded country. The scenery was wild and rough. I met no one and saw no one. After another fifteen miles was a shack at the side of the road. The occupation of the owner was selling petrol and oil to passing travellers. I opined that this was probably not an enviable vocation from a financial point of view. I filled up, and found to my dismay that the price, instead of being twenty-five cents per gallon, was seventy-five. It was 100 miles from the railway, and all supplies had to be brought by road, hence the trebled cost.

I have never been through wilder country than that which followed for 100 miles. Hilly, densely-wooded, and fertile, it was most difficult to believe that it was so thinly populated. Strange rock-formations appeared. Grotesque boulders of leviathan size lay strewn and standing in grass-covered openings. Wild pigeons by the score darted in and out amongst the trees. Merry squirrels scampered up the pine trees and eyed me from above. Huge "Jack Rabbits" and young antelopes bounded here and there, and, seeing the intruder, disappeared. It all seemed such a change from the desert journey of the day before.

At Quemado, about ninety miles from Magdalena, I felt hungry. Quemado consists of a wooden shack of an "hotel," and one "general merchandise" store. I stopped at the "hotel" and fed. Meanwhile it commenced to rain. My spirits sank with the barometer.

The rain stopped three hours afterwards.

I set out full of energy and perseverance an hour after that. We slipped and slithered and slid in the miry road. Ten miles was enough. All the energy and perseverance had flown to the winds. I rode up on to a hill-side to a spot on the fringe of a forest of cedar and yew. Propping Lizzie up on her stand, I went in search of fuel. I had decided on the luxury of a camp fire.

Fuel there was in abundance. Withered trunks and broken boughs lay strewn about the hill-side. I soon had a roaring fire and passed away an hour or two before dark in writing letters and ruminating on the delights of a camp fire.

As the sun sank down in the valley, I slipped under the old blanket and watched the flames as they leapt from the burning embers. Just ahead, almost in sight from where I lay, was the western borderline of New Mexico. Just beyond there, where the golden sun was slowly sinking in the valley, was Arizona; the Arizona that I longed so much to see. I had heard much of Arizona; its wonderful climate, its ancient, unknown ruins, its extinct volcanoes, its stupendous gorges, its great thirsty deserts. What would Arizona have in store for me? I wondered. And the fragrant smell of the burning cedarwood wove a magic charm about my thoughts as they slowly drifted into the mystic realm of the unconscious world.

Morning brought a smiling dawn. I rose early and returned to the trail.

In ten minutes I was in Arizona. A large signboard indicated the fact. The road grew wider and better. Even the scenery seemed to change perceptibly. I somehow felt at home in Arizona.

At Springerville I breakfasted and bought picture post-cards. When travelling the latter operation is equally as important as the former.

Here the road makes a sudden turn to the north, bearing afterwards to the north-west. After twenty miles of riding, the country became flatter; it seemed as though it were now an immense plateau. After another twenty, I reached a little town known as St. John. Here I filled a half-hour in the commendable process of consuming ices. I had now to traverse some difficult country, as the great desert of Arizona was approached. There were more mountains to climb, but when the summit was reached there was little or no decline on the opposite side, the altitude grew higher and higher, and as it did so, strange as it may seem, the earth grew flatter and flatter.

There is but one ridge ahead to climb. The rocky trail bends and twists as it slowly swallows up the gradient that connects us to the horizon. A final swerve, and we commence a slight descent. There is a gap in the hills; the trail skirts around one side, and behold, a vast, unbounded plain lies before us, stretching to left and right as far as the eye can see.

But what is this strange sight? On our right, barely a half of a mile from the road, is a gigantic mound. Its presence there, rising abruptly out of the mathematical flatness of the plain, seems ridiculous, absurd, uncanny. It gives the impression of having been just dropped from the sky. It is a mud volcano--an uncommon sight, and formed by the ejection of sand under pressure from below the surface of the earth. All around, the plain is of distinctly volcanic formation. Indeed, we have now entered a vast volcanic region, extending for several thousands of square miles. Many of the mountains that we shall see, some of them giant peaks, and some only little hills, are extinct volcanoes of other ages. They were young and active while man was in his barbaric infancy on this weary globe, perhaps even before that.

But soon is to appear a far more wondrous sight. In a few miles we enter a country of strange shapes and magic colours--the Petrified Forest of Arizona. The first signs of approach are chains of little lava hills of grey and white. They also have an air of abruptness. One wonders how they came to be there at all. Flowing down to the flat plain in graceful, mathematical curves, they look like mounds of chalk, although they are softer still. Composed of soft, fine lava-dust, they weather rapidly away. Now all the plain is lava-dust and a tuft of lean grass here and there has found a spot wherein to make a home. Further on one notices great blocks of stone, like pillars of marble, lying strewn about the plain, some half buried, some barely projecting, and some perfectly naked. Here is one, there is another--they are everywhere, in every direction, of all shades of colour and varying in size from fragments an inch in diameter to pillars twenty or thirty feet in girth and over 100 feet in length. Every fragment, every massive block of marble once formed part of a great forest that spread for hundreds of square miles. The trees of this great forest were huge leviathans, unlike anything we know of in the Old World and similar only to the giant Sequoias of California (but a few hundred miles away), that send their mighty trunks hundreds of feet into the air--the relics of a bygone race.

This great forest of Arizona was at its prime. The stately pine trees rose towering into the sky. Birds of wonderful plumage lived in those mighty branches, and wild animals roamed amongst its undergrowth. Then something happened; no one knows exactly what--this great forest was enveloped in volcanic dust that in time buried it completely. To the eye, if eye there was to witness the scene, the forest was no longer visible; it lay buried in the bowels of the earth; it had passed away; as a mighty, living forest it would exist no more. But those monster trees remained awhile, preserved by the all-surrounding lava. What happened then took thousands of years to achieve, though it can be recited in a few brief words. The trees in substance disappeared, but their forms remained in the hardened lava, like huge moulds waiting to be cast, their every crack and wrinkle preserved with inexorable accuracy. In time, it may have been æons, the moulds were cast, by some inexplicable phenomenon, and where once were timber and vegetable tissues came fluid marble rock that filled the hollows and cracks and wrinkles and reproduced the forms that ages before had been so suddenly arrested in their growth. Further ages passed, and gradually the soft lava was removed by the action of wind and rain and other causes. Gradually the harder material was laid bare, and the giant trees once more saw the light of day, but this time they were trunks of solid marble instead of pine wood. The work of denudation continued. The marble pillars, unsupported, fell to earth. Some broke into huge blocks, while others remained more or less intact through the whole of their length, and unless one examined them at close quarters and saw the nature of their texture, they could not be distinguished from a tree that had been recently felled.

There are hundreds of these marble pine and spruce tree trunks, whose cross-sections, revealed where they have broken, glisten with every colour of the rainbow. In places, where they lie tumbled and heaped together, it is as though a whole quarry of onyx had been dynamited out. In one place a fallen trunk of marble, nearly 200 feet in length, has spanned a gorge and formed a natural log bridge that all who dare can walk across.

Such is the fairy tale that scientists tell. The traveller whose privilege it is to journey across the Petrified Forest of Arizona will be lost in amazement at this fact which is so much stranger than any fiction.

I left the wonderful scene behind me with a feeling that I was bidding farewell to one of the prime mysteries of the world. Trunks and fragments of trunks could be seen projecting even from the surface of the road over which I passed, and a few blades of fine grass, with here and there a stunted cactus plant, were the only sign of life in any direction. I passed out as suddenly as I had entered. A double =S=-bend, where strange contorted rocks lay piled up in confusion on either side--and the Petrified Forest was left behind.

The sun was nearly setting when a couple of hours later I set out from Holbrook, well fed and well refreshed. From my map I judged I should be able to reach the Little Colorado River, on whose banks I could spend the night. But in Arizona the sun sets quickly. It can almost be said to get dark with a bump. The result was that in half an hour I was completely lost in the outskirts of the Great Arizona Desert. The trail had somehow disappeared, I knew not where, and but for my headlight, I should undoubtedly have ended in difficulties amid the inky blackness. Loth to turn back, I continued over the almost trackless waste of rock, sand, and prairie. I arrived at the rocky bed of a small stream. There were a few inches of water here and there, but it was not perceptibly moving. It could not possibly be the Little Colorado. I walked across to the other side. There I found a large ditch, more like an artificial dyke, that I knew I could never get Lizzie across. There was grass growing near, however, so I laid down my bed for the night, resolving to leave further investigations till daylight.

I should have known better than to camp by an almost stagnant stream, but I was so utterly tired that I defied the counsel of my own experience. Mosquitoes literally filled the air. Never have I known them so thick and so tenacious. The vibration of millions of wings kept the air in a constant shriek--a wild yell that never abated. I could only obtain relief from their attacks by enveloping my face completely with the thick blanket, and breathing through it. Then everything became so hot--the night itself was very sultry--that sleep was next to impossible. I snatched an hour or two of rest, but was a mass of bites and itching lumps next day.

In the morning, I returned to Holbrook, had breakfast, and searched for information about the road. It appeared that a bridge had collapsed somewhere, so a new trail had been formed to circumvent it. I had missed the turning the night before. At the garage where I made these inquiries, I took the opportunity of removing Lizzie's wheels, and of cleaning and adjusting the spindles. I packed them with new grease in preparation for the sandy journey to come, and removed and re-aligned the chain sprockets; I wanted no breakdowns or searches for missing parts in the baking, sandy desert. It was as well that I had taken precautions. I found the lock ring of one chain wheel missing altogether, and the sprocket half-way unscrewed from its shaft. The only item for regret was the charge of one dollar for the use of the garage! Having already had experience of American garage mechanics, I resolved not to allow any more to learn their trade at Lizzie's expense.

I had no difficulty in picking up the trail in the full light of day. Once again I set out to cross the great Desert of Arizona. The next town, a kind of oasis, was Winslow, about forty miles away. The barren prairie soon gave way to bare limestone rocks and shifting sand; vegetation disappeared altogether, save for occasional clumps of greeny-grey sage brush dotted here and there over the rocky waste that ever met the eye. The air was hot but clear. On an elevation one could see for tremendous distances. The little tuft of black smoke that hung over Winslow looked clear enough to be a mile or two away. It was thirty; in the distance was a great silver line, threading its way intermittently across the plain. I knew it to be the Little Colorado, which, like its mother, the Great Colorado, flows nearly the whole of its length in a canyon and seems deliberately to choose the path of greatest resistance, cutting through rocks and gorges of limestone and granite with ne'er a murmur.

As Winslow drew near, the narrow sandy track gave way to a broad concrete highway. I had not seen a made road of any description for many days. The appearance of concrete here in the middle of a desert seemed ridiculous. I would enjoy it to the full. Lizzie's throttle jumped open unexpectedly and away we sailed through the breeze. "There's a catch in this somewhere," I told myself. There was! It nearly meant grief. The city architect had foreseen the goading lure of that cold flat stretch of concrete and made up his mind that speeding should not exist thereon. So he made several dips therein at intervals, each dip about five or ten feet below the normal level of the road. Any attempt to travel at more than twenty would mean damage to the vehicle when it hit the opposite side. Unfortunately these obstructions were absolutely invisible until but a few feet ahead. Sometimes there was a warning. More often there was not. The first I came to quite unawares and at a high speed. The machine with its momentum nearly leapt clean across the space, and had I been going much slower it would have struck the opposite side lower down and inevitably have caused a serious crash. I went warily after that and wondered what ingeniously contrived anti-speeding devices I should meet next.

Arrived at Winslow, I ate heartily of ices. The busy modern town seemed a most remarkable contrast to the sandy wastes that surrounded it.

I now had a long journey ahead. Flagstaff, the next town, was over eighty miles away, and the trail ran across some of the most arid country of Arizona. For mile upon mile there was nothing to be seen but yellow sand and, on the horizon, a rugged range of hills. Ahead, nearly a hundred miles away, loomed up the San Francisco Peaks, dark and threatening. Overhead the sun beat down with unrelenting fury. One could see the shimmer of the air above the baking sand as the tremendous heat oozed out of it into the atmosphere. Here and there, one could see spirals of sand hundreds of feet high whisked up by some strange whirling motion of the air, and carried for hundreds of yards across the wilderness, gathering in volume and height as they moved, only to collapse again and give birth to others. Not a sign of life or vegetation was visible anywhere. What a place to be stranded in without water! But I had plenty with me. I stopped to drink from the bag on my handlebar every few miles. The heat and the glare were awful.

A few miles out of Winslow one cylinder ceased to fire. I had been wondering when the next instalment of misfortune was to arrive. Like a true pessimist, I expected it would come in a place like this. So I was not disheartened.

I stopped two or three times to change plugs and examine the engine. It was of no avail, and the heat grew so intense when I was not moving that it was impossible to stop for longer than a few minutes at a time. There was no shade, not even a rock to hide me from the fiery sun. The frame of the machine seemed red-hot, and even the tools in the tool-box were too hot to handle unprotected.

"Another overhaul at Flagstaff," I told myself, and continued again on three cylinders. Ploughing through the loose sand absorbed much of the power of the engine, but I was content, so long as we kept moving. Slowly the metal sign-posts of the "Touring Club of California" that marked the miles were passed. They were the only items of interest in this barren country. Many times they were missing altogether. Often they lay prone upon the ground, the strong, eight-feet-long steel tubing of the post bent in strange forms. They had been uprooted by some unfortunate traveller and used as levers or crowbars to extricate a car that had left the beaten track and sunk in the loose sand of the desert. Some even bore conflicting particulars, and it was quite usual to notice the distances increase instead of decrease the nearer one drew to one's destination! Often the signs themselves had been riddled with bullet-holes "just for fun" by some blasé traveller with a taste for shooting. Splendid amusement, to shoot at a sign-post put there at enormous expense by a private club for the benefit of all!

Slowly the hours went by and, as they did, a huge thunder-storm could be seen brewing over the San Francisco Peaks, now only forty miles away. The whole sky became dull and overcast. The loose yellow sand gave place to rocks and shingle, and gradually the desert was left behind. As the altitude increased--we were climbing slowly all the time--signs of life appeared. Lean grass, parched with thirst and brown with the heat, was seen once more, and later a few sheep were noticed sheltering behind rocks and boulders.

I pushed forward with all haste. Flagstaff was at the foot of the San Francisco Peaks and there would certainly be a deluge very shortly. The road was abominable. In most places it was so rocky and the gradient so steep that it was like riding up great flights of rugged steps. The sharp rocks dug in the tyres down to the rims, and the vibration shook the very sockets of one's bones.

On the left, barely a mile from the trail, we passed the "Meteor Mountain." This is a most remarkable sight. Situated in the midst of comparatively flat or rolling country, it looks at first sight like the crater of a great volcano. But its origin is not volcanic. It gives the impression of having been formed by artificial and not by natural means. The crater is half a mile across and the interior of the crater is saucer-shaped. An air of mystery envelops its origin, and many theories have been put forward to explain it. But the theories have either been disproved or have never been definitely accepted.

"Meteor Mountain" remains to this day a mystery of geology. In its crater is a ranch-house and hundreds of sheep graze in its vicinity.

A dozen miles farther on the trail led on to a magnificent steel bridge spanning the "Diablo Canyon"--a wonderful gorge in the limestone rocks. Far, far below ran a little stream of clear water.

The sky grew blacker still. We continued climbing over the sharp, rocky trail. The mighty peaks ahead were almost lost in a sea of blackness. Distant thunder rumbled and groaned across the desolate waste. Sharp flashes of lightning lit up the heavens for a moment and revealed the sharp, lurid outlines of the three giants around whose peaks centred the fury of the skies. Slowly the storm abated. I thanked Heaven for that.

Then we came to the fringe of a wonderful forest that covers the plateau and clothes the mountain sides almost to the summit of their peaks. The sight of the trees, the sound of the breezes as they rustled through the branches bearing with them the magic scent of the pines, was like passing from death to life. It was a new world, a world of new sensations and pleasant forms. The broiling wastes, the dazzling yellow sand, the strange and sometimes ugly shapes, the grotesque, the mysterious, the incredible: these were left behind--for a while.

The storm had almost passed. Much rain had fallen, but fortunately the trail lay through a stretch of volcanic dust. The rain when it fell did not dissolve it, but soaked through as quickly as it fell, leaving the surface almost as hard and dry as it was before. I thanked Heaven again for that. Closer, closer, ever we climbed, until often the mountains were hardly to be seen; we were amongst them, climbing them, in them. Here and there the clustering trees grew thinner and fields of wild flowers, mauve and purple-coloured, would burst into view, clothing the valleys and the slopes like a great carpet. Then a glade would appear of fresh green grass--grass so fresh and so green that it would seem to have been meant more for a child's fairy-book than for a real live world. Then a beautiful mountain would appear through the trees, its sides and its angles glistening with every colour of the rainbow and changing with every new aspect. This would be an extinct volcanic cone and the colours would be reflected from the loose cinders that formed its whole. Then amongst the lofty pine trees the traveller would see--as a last remnant of the grotesque--vast fields of lava, great beds of solid cinder, thrown up into monstrous shapes with strange, sinister outlines. And onwards, ever onwards, ever nearer to Flagstaff we went, the wheels gliding noiselessly over the smooth lava-track that wound its way in and out of the pine trees and up and over the foothills and valleys towards the West. We enter a large valley, from which a wonderful view of the San Francisco Peaks delights the traveller. They are barely a half-dozen miles away now; their great volcanic cones, over a couple of miles in height above the sea, can be seen as sharply and as clearly as though they were but 100 yards away. So mighty are they, and so pure is the air of Arizona, that on a clear day they can be seen for 200 miles in any direction.

At last the small town of Flagstaff is reached. It is clean, modern, and laid out in pretentious square blocks, some with only a few bungalows built thereon. Evening was drawing on. Not having had a meal for over twelve hours, I hied me to a restaurant where puffed cereals and apricot pies and mugs of good coffee effected a miraculous disappearance. Thereafter I followed the scent of a comfortable hotel, where once more I slept the sleep of the righteous.