THE GRAND CANON 



superb white lilies, form forests hardly less 

 wonderful, though here they grow singly or 

 in small lonely groves. The low, almost stem- 

 less Yucca baccata, with beautiful lily flowers 

 and sweet banana-like fruit, prized by the 

 Indians, is common along the canon-rim, 

 growing on lean, rocky soil beneath mountain- 

 mahogany, nut pines, and junipers, beside 

 dense flowery mats of Spircea ccespitosa and 

 the beautiful pinnate-leaved Spircea mille- 

 folia. The nut pine (Pinus edulis) scattered 

 along the upper slopes and roofs of the canon 

 buildings, is the principal tree of the strange 

 dwarf Coconino Forest. It is a picturesque 

 stub of a pine about twenty-five feet high, 

 usually with dead, lichened limbs thrust 

 through its rounded head, and grows on crags 

 and fissured rock tables, braving heat and 

 frost, snow and drought, and continuing pa- 

 tiently, faithfully fruitful for centuries. In- 

 dians and insects and almost every desert bird 

 and beast come to it to be fed. 



To civilized people from corn and cattle and 

 wheat-field countries the canon at first sight 

 seems as uninhabitable as a glacier crevasse, 

 utterly silent and barren. Nevertheless it is 

 the home of a multitude of om* fellow-mortals, 

 men as well as animals and plants. Centu- 

 ries ago it was inhabited by tribes of Indians, 



373 



