480 NAVAHO HOUSES [ETH. ANN. 17 
is not unusual for a wagon to travel 50 or 60 miles between two points 
not 20 miles distant from each other. 
The high mountain districts are characterized by a heavy growth of 
giant pines, with firs and spruce in the highest parts, and many groves 
of scrub oak. The pines are abundant and make excellent lumber. 
Going downward they merge into pifions, useful for firewood but 
valueless as timber, and these in turn give place to junipers and 
cedars, which are found everywhere throughout the foothills and on 
the high mesa lands. The valleys proper, and the low mesas which 
bound them, are generally destitute of trees; their vegetation consists 
only of sagebrush and greasewood, with a scanty growth of grass in 
favorable spots. 
To the traveler in the valley the country appears to consist of sandy 
plains bounded in the distance by rocky cliffs. When he ascends to the 
higher plateaus he views a wide landscape of undulating plain studded 
with wooded hills, while from the mountain summits he looks down 
upon a Jand which appears to be everywhere cut into a network of 
jagged canyons—a confused tangle of cliffs and gorges without system. 
For a few weeks in early summer the table-lands are seen in their 
most attractive guise. The open stretches of the mesas are carpeted 
with verdure almost hidden under a profusion of flowers. The gray 
and dusty sagebrush takes on a tinge of green, and even the prickly 
and repulsive greasewood clothes itself with a multitude of golden 
blossoms. Cacti of various kinds vie with one another in producing 
the most brilliant flowers, odorless but gorgeous. But in a few 
weeks all this brightness fades and the country resumes the colorless 
monotonous aspect which characterizes it. 
July and August and sometimes part of September comprise the 
rainy season. This period is marked by sudden heavy showers of short 
duration, and the sandy soil absorbs sufficient moisture to nourish the 
grass and herbage for a time; but most of the water finds its way 
directly into deep-cut channels and thence in heavy torrents to the deep 
canyons of the San Juan and the Colorado, where it is lost. A small 
portion of the rainfall and much of the snow water percolates the soil 
and the porous sandstones which compose the region, and issues in 
small springs along the edges of the mesas and in the little canyons; 
but these last only a few months, and they fail in the time of greatest 
need—in the hot summer days when the grass is dry and brittle and 
the whole country is parched. 
The direct dependence of the savage on nature as he finds it is 
nowhere better illustrated than on the Navaho reservation. In the 
three essentials of land, water, and vegetation, his country is not an 
ideal one. The hard conditions under which he lives have acted 
directly on his arts and industries, on his habits and customs, and also 
on his mind and his mythology. In one respect only has he an advan- 
tage: he is blessed with a climate which acts in a measure as an oftset 
