NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
Our Country’s Wonder Places 
Where Some of Them are Located and How to Visit Them 
By M. J. BROWN 
It would almost seem that our 
most learned are the most ignorant of 
America’s wonders. 
I talked with a county school com- 
missioner in New York state regard- 
ing the antiquities of our country, but 
he was so hopelessly and embarass- 
ingly ignorant of them that I permit- 
ted him to change the subject, 
In Dunkirk, N, Y., I attended an 
illustrated lecture on the ancient won- 
ders abroad. The lecturer was high in 
state educational circles. He had been 
abroad and taken photographs of the 
wonders in Italy, Greece, Egypt and 
other places, which he showed with 
stereopticon slides. At the conclusion 
he strongly advised, almost pleaded, 
that every student present who pos- 
sibly could, should see at least part of 
the old world wonders, as a part of 
his education. 
I ate supper at the same table with 
him after the lecture, and I remarked 
that he had not shown a picture of 
old world wonders that could not be 
almost duplicated and surpassed at 
home. 
He asked where were the Cata- 
combs like Rome and Syracuse, and 
I replied in the mummy caves in Can- 
yon De Shelly, northeastern Arizona. 
He wanted to know where was 
there scenery that would equal the 
Alps and I told him to take a trip up 
the Rio Grande river from Santa Fe, 
and he would find it, and afterward 
see the magnificent Grand Canyon, 
which put in the background anything 
on earth. And as to Pompeii, there 
were 15,000 buried cities in New 
Mexico and Arizona. 
Wonders? This country is full of 
them, full of the strangest corners, 
people, scenery and ruins in the 
world—and just as old as the oldest. 
And it seems so strange that more: 
of our people do not see them and 
know more of them. Nine out of ten 
educated men can tell more of the an- 
tiquity of the old country than of 
their home and there is not one of 
our cluster of wonders but what any 
man Or woman can see with safety, 
yet nine-tenths of us know as little of 
them as we do of the interior of Af- 
rica. 
We all know of the Passion Play 
at Oberammergau, and hundreds of 
our people go abroad to see it, but 
up in northwestern New Mexico, back 
in the mountain hamlets, a commun- 
ity of Penitenties, have had annual 
crucifixions of human beings for 
years, and today, while these barbar- 
ities have been stopped, there can be 
seen horrible scenes of self-punish-- 
ment. I have seen the fanatics with 
the blood running down their bare 
backs and dripping off their heels, 
They are self-scourgers — a remnant 
of the Flaggellants of the middle ages 
in Europe. 
Our school boys know of the won- 
derful snake charmers of the Orient, 
and the jugglers of India, but they 
DON’T know that our own Moqui 
Indians will handle the deadly dia- 
mond rattlesnake as we would a rope, 
and that the Rio Grande Pueblos per- 
form some of the most wonderful of 
magician’s tricks. 
Every school boy and girl can tell 
you of the old history of Salem, 
(Mass.) witchcraft, but there is 
among the mountains of New Mex- 
ico today, 1913, a great area where 
many a Mexican man and woman are 
murdered because they are witches 
and can bewitch. 
How many of our people know 
anything about the extinct cliff dwel- 
lers? Yet only about twelve miles 
from the station of Espanola, on the 
narrow guage railroad of the D. & 
R. G., north of Santa Fe., you can see 
the grandest ruins in the world. 
There is not a hardship in reaching 
these cliffs. The country is compari- 
tively level, and the road follows the 
little Santa Clara river. And here on 
one cliff you can see the former homes 
of ten thousand people, who lived, 
died, and whose history perished be- 
fore a white man ever dreamed there 
was a western continent, 
“We all know about the great Sa- 
harah desert abroad, but right here 
at home we have one as absolute, and 
in spots more deadly, extending from 
Idaho into old Mexico, and embracing 
parts of Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Ne- 
vada, Arizona and Texas. And its 
most gruesome part, Death Valley, 
has an African desert an irrigated 
ranch by comparison, 
The most of us have heard of the 
petrified forest, but ask where it is 
and see how few can tell you. And 
yet a railroad runs almost to its front 
gate. Get off at Holbrook, drive six 
or seven miles and you reach a forest 
of agate, covering hundreds of square 
miles—an area where wood has turn- 
ed to stone. While it is not much to 
look at, yet it is one of the big won- 
ders of America, and a place almost 
any man can see if he will. 
Zuni, one of the Seven Cities of 
Coboli, is one of the most interest- 
ing sights an American could hope to 
see. It is a people of the past, liv- 
ing in the today. It is the oldest in- 
habited place in North America. 
There the Indians live in their great 
communial home, 1900 of them. They 
have lived there hundreds, perhaps 
thousands of years, and there are 
some of the strangest, wildest sights 
one could dream of. Zuni is a hard 
place to get to, one of the most hid- 
den of our odd spots, but it can be 
made with absolute safety. About 100 
miles south of Gallup, New Mexico, 
and it must be made with horses, for 
the road is too rough and too sandy 
for auto travel. But make it and you 
will never forget or regret it. 
Southwest to Zuni, well down to 
the Mexican border, is a big depres- 
sion in the land, and covered with 
shallow salt water. There are no 
streams running into it. It is appar- 
ently fed from salt springs under- 
neath. Out in the center rises a lit- 
tle peak or island, from the top of 
which gushes g spring of pure, cold 
fresh water. 
We half waded, half floated out to 
the island on an old water-logged 
raft, and my partner couldn’t see why 
we went to all this discomfort to see 
a fresh water spring. 
It reminded me of the story of two 
men looking at Niagara for the first 
time, 
“Tsn’t it wonderful?” asked one, as 
he saw the great volume of water 
tumble over. 2 
“Wonderful!” repeated his com- 
panion (who of course was an Irish- 
man) “I don’t see any wonder. 
There’s the water and there’s the 
hole.” : 
The wonder with me was how salt 
and fresh water could come up from 
the same lake. But there are many 
things to wonder at in the great dry 
land. 
There are mud springs to be found 
in this country, big wells of liquid 
quicksand in localities where one 
would not think there was wetness 
enough in a hundred sections to ex- 
tinguish a match. These pits are cov- 
ered over with polished, baked mud 
and you would never dream of their 
danger. I broke a hole through the 
crust of one and shoved an eight-foot 
limb out of sight, Animals know their 
danger far better than men. They say 
if you once get in you never come 
out and I believe it. 
