736 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



briglit-colored flowers. Foxes and wolves are common enough, 

 and we are rarely out of sight or soimd of the coyote, bands of 

 which make night hideous with tlieir shrill, weird cry. 



Although the Navajo country proper is to the north and east 

 of Tusayan, tlieir hogans, or thatched-roofed dugouts, are met with 

 here and there along the valley of the river. The iSTavajos are the 

 Bedouins of America. We often see the women in front of tlie 

 hogans weaving, or the men along the trail tending tlieir flocks of 

 sheep and goats, for they are great herders and produce large quan- 



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titles of wool, part of which they exchange to the traders; the re- 

 mainder the women weave into blankets, which are in general use 

 throughout the Southwest and which find their way through the 

 trade to all parts of the relic-loving world. They raise, in addition, 

 great quantities of beans, which they also send out to the railroad. 

 They are better supplied with ponies than the Hopi, and with 

 them make long journeys, for the I^avajos do not live a com- 

 munal life as do the pueblo people, but are scattered over an ex- 

 tensive territory, each family living alone and being independent 

 of its neighbors. 



After a long and tiresome journey of four days we arrive at the 

 foot of the mesa and begin the long, upward climb, for Oraibi is 

 eight hundred feet above the surrounding plain and seven thousand 

 feet above the level of the sea. Just before the crest is reached 



