with both admiration for their gameness and glee for their disheveled
and weary appearance. Finally I got so that all I could do was to drag
myself onward with eyes down on the rough ground. In this way I kept
on until I heard Wetherill call me. He had stopped--was waiting for
me. The dark and silent Indian stood beside him, looking down the
canyon.

I saw past the vast jutting wall that had obstructed my view. A mile
beyond, all was bright with the colors of sunset, and spanning the
canyon in the graceful shape and beautiful hues of the rainbow was a
magnificent natural bridge.

"Nonnezoshe," said Wetherill, simply.

This rainbow bridge was the one great natural phenomenon, the one
grand spectacle which I had ever seen that did not at first give vague
disappointment, a confounding of reality, a disenchantment of contrast
with what the mind had conceived.

But this thing was glorious. It absolutely silenced me. My body and
brain, weary and dull from the toil of travel, received a singular and
revivifying freshness. I had a strange, mystic perception that this
rosy-hued, tremendous arch of stone was a goal I had failed to reach in
some former life, but had now found. Here was a rainbow magnified even
beyond dreams, a thing not transparent and ethereal, but solidified, a
work of ages, sweeping up majestically from the red walls, its iris-hued
arch against the blue sky.

[Illustration: FIRST SIGHT OF THE GREAT NATURAL BRIDGE]