, on the Nile,
approaching the palaces of Allahabad in India, or coming up to Moorish
minarets and twin towns of the Alhambra in Spain?

Believe me, you are in neither Europe, Asia, nor Africa. You are in a
much despised land called "America," whence wealth and culture run off
to Europe, Asia and Africa, to find what they call "art" and
"antiquity."

It is October 3rd in Tucson, Arizona; not far from the borders of Old
Mexico as the rest of the world reckon distance. The rain has been
falling in torrents. Rain is not supposed to fall in the Desert, but it
has been coming down in slant torrents and the sky is reflected
everywhere in the roadside pools. The air is soft as rose petals, for
the altitude is only 2,000 feet; too high to be languid, too low for the
sting of autumn frosts.

We motor, first, through the old Spanish town--relics of a grandeur that
America does not know to-day, a grandeur more of spirit than display.
The old Spanish grandee never counted his dollars, nor measured up the
value of a meal to a guest. But he counted honor dear as the Virgin
Mary, and made a gamble of life, and hated tensely as he loved. The old
mansion houses are fallen in disrepute, to-day. They are given over, for
the most part to Chinese and Japanese merchants; but through the open
windows you can still see plazas and patios of inner courtyards, where
oleanders are in perpetual bloom and roses climb the trellis work, and
the parrot calls out "swear words" of Spanish pirate and highwayman. St.
Augustine Mission, where heroes shed martyr blood, is now a saloon and
dance hall, but where rags and tatters flaunted from the clothes lines
of negro and Japanese and Chinese tenant, I could not but think of the
torn flags that mark the most heroic action of regiments.

[Illustration: The Mission of the San Xavier at Tucson, Arizona, one of
the most ancient in the New World, has an almost Oriental aspect]

From the Spanish Town of Tucson, which any other nation would have
treasured as a landmark and capitalized in dollars for the tourist, you
pass modern mansions that wisely follow the Spanish-Moorish type of
architecture, most suited to Desert atmosphere.

Then you come on the Tucson Farms Company Irrigation project, now
sagebrush and cactus land put under the ditch from Santa Cruz River and
turned over to settlers from Old Mexico--who were driven out by the
Revolution--for $25 an acre. You see the lonely eyed woman pioneer
sitting at