In the Giant Cactus Belt 181 
Egyptian temples and beyond the mesa are 
the New River Mountains, softer in outline 
and washed with rose-madder. There is 
more light—more sky—than we know in the 
East and one sees much farther. At the same 
time it is greener here than one would expect 
and all this is but a suggestion of the vivid 
and marvellous colouring of the Grand Cafion, 
which indeed has no equal in the world. 
Beyond the desert, to the west and south- 
west, the ranges are purple and ethereal blue 
and in the remote distance pale phantoms 
against the sky. Some fifty miles from here 
as the crow flies, rises a short range higher than 
the rest, consisting of four rugged saw-toothed 
peaks of about the same height, sprinkled 
with snow and with something of the look of 
the Dolomites of the southern Tyrol. These 
are the MacDowell Peaks, or the Four Peaks 
as they are usually called, and thereby hangs 
a tale: 
When I climbed up here and established my 
winter study under the sky, I looked across 
at MacDowell for the first time in forty years. 
For it happened that in September of the 
year 1869—an early day in the history of 
Arizona—a troop of the Eighth Cavalry, my 
father in command, arrived at old Camp 
