lief be a Strasburg goose. When you and I went to school it was not
quite so bad. True, neither of us could now extract a cube root with
a stump puller, and it is sad to reflect how little call life has made
for duodecimals. Sometimes it seems that all our struggle with moody
verbs and insubordinate conjunctions was a wicked waste--poor little
sleepy puzzleheads! But there were certain joyous facts which we
remember yet. Lake Erie was very like a whale; Lake Ontario was a
seal; and Italy was a boot.

The great Chihuahuan desert is a boot too; a larger boot than Italy.
The leg of it is in Mexico, the toe is in Arizona, the heel in New
Mexico; and the Jornado is in the boot-heel.

El Jornado del Muerto--the Journey of the Dead Man! From what dim old
legend has the name come down? No one knows. The name has outlived the
story.

Perhaps some grim, hard-riding Spaniard made his last ride here; weary
at last of war, turned his dead face back to Spain and the pleasant
valleys of his childhood. We have a glimpse of him, small in the
mighty silence; his faithful few about him, with fearful backward
glances; a gray sea of waving grama breaking at their feet; the great
mountains looking down on them. Plymouth Rock is unnamed yet.--Then
the mist shuts down.

The Santa Fé Trail reaches across the Jornado; tradition tells of
vague, wild battles with Apache and Navajo; there are grave-cairns
on lone dim ridges, whereon each passer casts a stone. Young mothers
dreamed over the cradles of those who now sleep here, undreaming; here
is the end of all dreams.