state is a plateau, with an elevation of from five thousand to seven
thousand feet. Hence, as it is not latitude, so much as altitude,
that gives us healthful, pleasing temperature, in parts of Arizona
the climate is delightful during the entire year.

[Illustration: THE DRIVE THROUGH THE PINES.]

[Illustration: THE SAN FRANCISCO MOUNTAIN.]

A portion of this stage-coach journey led us over the flank of the
great San Francisco Mountain. The isolated position, striking
similarity, and almost uniform altitude of its four peaks, rising
nearly thirteen thousand feet above the sea, have long made them
famous. Moreover, they are memorable for having cast a lurid light
upon the development of this portion of our planet. Cold, calm, and
harmless though they now appear, the time has been when they
contained a molten mass which needed but a throb of Earth's uneasy
heart to light the heavens with an angry glare, and cover the
adjoining plains with floods of fire. Lava has often poured from
their destructive cones, and can be traced thence over a distance of
thirty miles; proving that they once served as vents for the volcanic
force which the thin crust of earth was vainly striving to confine.
But their activity is apparently ended. The voices with which they
formerly shouted to one another in the joy of devastation have been
silenced. Conquered at last, their fires smolder now beneath a
barrier too firm to yield, and their huge forms appear like funeral
monuments reared to the memory of the power buried at their base.
Another fascinating sight upon this drive was that of the Painted
Desert whose variously colored streaks of sand, succeeding one
another to the rim of the horizon, made the vast area seem paved with