GOOD-BYE TO ARIZONA 127 



Fifty miles beyond Willow Spring is Bitter 

 Spring, the first dependable water, but no one 

 ever drinks it unless driven to do so by extrem- 

 ity, and even then in small quantities, for it is 

 rank with ill-tasting minerals and contains a 

 percentage of poison. Ten miles beyond Bitter 

 Spring, however, Navajo Spring, pure and 

 cold, bubbles out of a canon in the Echo Cliffs, 

 and ten miles beyond Navajo Spring is Lee's 

 Ferry on the Colorado River. 



We wound down the trail that leads from the 

 mesa to the lower level, passed Lee's Ranch and 

 Moen Ave and at midforenoon reached Wil- 

 low Spring, watered our horses, filled our can- 

 teens, and drank deeply ourselves, for we real- 

 ized that this was the last good water we were 

 to have until we reached Navajo Springs. 

 Then we turned into the trail leading north- 

 ward over the desert, following the red-and- 

 pink walls of Echo cliffs, which rose on our 

 right a serrated ridge several hundred feet in 

 height, while to the left lay a mesa broken with 

 many canons. During the afternoon Cotton- 

 wood tanks were passed, a pile of stones by the 

 side of the main trail marking the by-trail 

 which led to the tanks a mile to the westward in 

 the mouth of a canon. 



All the country was naked of vegetation, 



