46 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



Marsh Pass. 

 Sixty-five miles east of Red Lake is Marsh Pass, a rock- 

 bound waste in which there is often no soil whatever for con- 

 siderable stretches. On the one hand are the cliffs of the 

 great Black Mesa and on the other an immense rounded ridge 

 of bare red sandstone with stunted pines and junipers here and 

 there in the crevices. In places where soil has accumulated, 

 we found sedums, flaxes, gilias, and, of course, cacti. 



Laguna Canyon. 



The most attractive feature of Marsh Pass is the fact 

 that it is the entrance to Laguna Canyon. The canyon is so 

 called, it is said, because it was once, and in historic times, a 

 region of lakes and swamps. It is nearly desert now, though 

 Laguna Creek winds through it entrenched in a canyon of its 

 own cut many feet deep in the valley debris. At one point I 

 noted a layer of peat nearly two feet thick which bears out 

 the contention of its once watery character. Shells picked up 

 in the peat show that it was inhabited by the same kind of 

 snails that now creep over the water plants two thousand miles 

 farther east. Laguna Canyon is a broad and attractive stretch 

 with the ordinary desert plants in its drier parts but with room 

 also for currants, roses, asters, evening primroses, yarrow, 

 clematis, and other plants regarded as mesophytes. The most 

 important features of the canyon, however, are the great 

 caverns more than a city block long and correspondingly high 

 and deep. In these caverns, some of the greatest cliff ruins 

 yet discovered are located. At one of the largest, Betatakin, 

 we spent some time, and 1 found high above the cliff dwellings 

 a moist ledge on which grew a labiate that is either rare or new 

 to science. From the point of view of the aborigines, the cliff 

 community is advantageously situated. A spring of pure 

 water issues from one side of the cavern, while the slopes be- 



