ped off the transcontinental and taken a local
freight for the Hopi towns. When a tourist wants to see things in
Germany, he finds a hundred willing palms out to collect and point the
way; but when a tourist leaves the beaten trail in America, if he asks
too many questions, he is promptly told to "go to--" I'll not say where.
That German wasn't in a good mood when he dropped off the freight train
at Laguna. Good rooms you can always get at the Marmons, but there is no
regular meal place except the section house. If you are a good
Westerner, you will carry your own luncheon, or take cheerful pot luck
as it comes; but the German wasn't a good Westerner; and it didn't
improve his temper to have butter served up mixed with flies to the tune
of the landlady's complaint that "it didn't pay nohow to take tourists"
and she "didn't see what she did it for anyway."

They tell you outside that it is a hard drive, all the way from
twenty-five to thirty miles to Acoma. Don't you believe it! For once,
Western miles are too short. The drive is barely eighteen miles and as
easy as on a paved city street; but the German had left most of his
temper at Laguna. When he reached the foot of the steep acclivity
leading up to the town of Acoma on the very cloud-crest of a rampart
rock and found no guide, he started up without one and, of course,
missed the way. How he ever reached the top without breaking his neck is
a wonder. The Indians showed me the way he had come and said they could
not have done it themselves. Anyway, what temper he had not left at
Laguna he scattered sulphurously on the rocks before he reached the
crest of Acoma; and when he had climbed the perilous way, he was too
fatigued to go on through the town. The whole episode is typically
characteristic of our stupid short-sightedness as a continent to our own
advantage. A $20 miner's tent at Laguna for meals, another at Acoma, a
good woman in charge at the Laguna end to put up the lunches, a $10 a
month Indian boy to show tourists the way up the cliff--and thousands of
travelers would go in and come out with satisfaction. Yet here is Acoma,
literally the Enchanted, unlike anything else in the whole wide world;
and it is shut off from the sightseer because enterprise is lacking to
put in $100 worth of equipment and set the thing going. Is it any wonder
people say that Europeans live on the opportunities Americans throw
away? If Acoma were in Germany, they would be diverting the