BY GREGORY MASON

HROUGH an arched gateway my Turkish friend led me into a garden long, narrow, and bright green-within four high white walls. Along the two sides cypresses as motionless as stage trees lifted their slender columns of darker green in vain to reach the height of the slim white minarets of the mosques beyond the walls. At the rear was a fountain in the center of a raised floor of tiles under a roof supported by bare poles. On cushions around the fountain sat a dozen men, members of the dervish order to which these grounds belonged. Most of them were dressed in baggy long trousers and in the peculiar tailed garment sometimes called a "Stambouli frock coat." Some wore bright-colored girdles and shirts of golden or silver colored silk-the product of their own city, Brusa, the famous former capital of the Turks. All of them wore fezes.

They rose when we arrived and bowed politely, raising the hand almost from the knee to the temple in the characteristic way of their people. We sat down on cushions also, coffee was passed, and one of the dervishes began to play on a reed instrument like a very long flute. My friend called it simply "the reed." The great brown plain below the hill where Brusa sits quivered under the hot Anatolian sky. There was not enough breeze to move even the little columns of smoke from the cigarettes of the dervishes. We had shade, though, and the cool plashing of the fountain and the wild, liquid burbling of the reed. Somewhere a dove was uttering the sleepy call which Turkish children say is addressed to Joseph, who fell into the well. Youssouf djouk" ("Little Joseph "), the children say the dove says. All these things-the coffee, the cigarettes, the shade, the fountain, the reed, and the bird's call-made what the Turk calls "Keif," which is a state as near to heaven as a man can get without dying.

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After half an hour the enchantment was broken by the arrival of a Russian officer, whom the dervishes greeted with enthusiastic politeness. My friend and I left the magic garden, where the reed began again to weave its spell, now coaxingly low, now imperatively shrill. When it had been smothered with distance, as we walked downhill my friend asked:

"Did you notice how cordial all those men were to that Russian officer?"

"Yes, it was very noticeable."

"Well, that is something you Americans and Englishmen and Frenchmen ought to think about. All Turks have the warmest feelings for Russians now." "What is the reason?" I asked. "The reason is partly that both Turks and Russians are always sociable people by nature, but this present friendliness arises more from the fact that we and the Russians feel a peculiar bond between us. We both suffer from the injustice of the Allies. You persecute us, who were

your enemies, and you persecute the Russians, who fought on your side.

"Let the Entente take care,' continued my companion. "We shall know what to do if this oppression of Turkey continues. There is a way out for us, there is a weapon for our retaliation—a weapon you fear. If you continue your oppression of Turkey, you will drive us all to become Bolsheviki."

My companion quickened his steps, turned a corner and stopped before a weather-beaten door, much like the other doors in the white walls which lined the narrow streets we had followed from the garden of the dervishes. This was the house of a friend of my companion. He was a very prominent man in Brusa, and we will call him the Pasha. We found him in his garden with another prominent citizen of Brusa, whom we will call the Bey. The Pasha's house and the Pasha's garden were like the houses and gardens of most of the upper-class residents of Brusa. The house built around two sides of the garden. Sheds or outhouses hemmed in another side and a. wall screened the fourth. At the corner of the door nearest the street entrance was a bubbling spring of water, as clear and cool as the spring in the garden of the dervishes. This water came from an underground river which

was

bursts from the mountain behind Brusa and is directed in pipes to all the gardens in the town.

Upstairs one side of the house was entirely open to the fragrant breezes from the garden. All the rooms were bare except for a very few articles of European furnitureEuropean furniture-a table, one bed, three or four bureaus, and half a dozen chairs. But every room had a divan built against at least two of its walls, and often against all four. On these the guests of the Pasha who came every evening to smoke and talk sat with their legs under them or sprawled about in all the attitudes of boys at their ease.

That evening we had dinner on the balcony. Invisible women prepared the dishes and placed them at the foot of the stairs, and our host carried them up to the table himself. Ramazan had just ended—Ramazan, the month of fasting, when the true Mohammedan eats nothing from sunrise to sunset; and this meal was a bountiful one. Each course was served in a large bowl. This was placed in the center of the table, and each of us helped himself with his own spoon or fork. Spoons and forks plied back and forth between the bowl and four mouths until the bowl was empty. At once the next bowl would be brought to the table. In rapid succession we accounted for tchorba, a thick noodle soup; yah-ni, stewed beef; kabak dolmasse, stuffed squash; pilaf, rice variously spiced and seasoned, which is one of the favorite dishes of Turkey; kiraz, cherries; fussoueya,

string beans; hoshab, stewed cherries; and baklava, an excellent pastry. All this was washed down with a delicious drink called uzum sherbeti, which is made from raisins.

The next day I was taken ill with malaria. The Pasha, the Bey, and my friend, whom we will call the Effendi, heard the news late in the evening. They came at once to my hotel and at midnight drove me to the Pasha's house. I was there a week. I have never seen such hospitality. I was put into the one European bed, the whole house was converted into a hospital, and the neighborhood was scoured for remedies and delicacies believed to be good for malarial patients.

In that week I never saw even the back of the head of my host's wife, nor did I see the face of any woman. Occasionally a female arm would reach through the doorway to put a glass of water or a dish of the sour-milk custard the Turks love on a table just inside the door. Never did the owner of the arm come through the door. In Constantinople. Turkish women are beginning to emerge from their historic seclusion. The veil is being worn less and less. But new ideas penetrate slowly into the interior. And men are conservatives in Turkey.

Every evening ten or fifteen of the leading men of the town would come to see the Pasha. They would sit in a ring around the sick stranger, offering all sorts of favors and asking questions about America. I found them what most foreigners who visit Turkey find the Turks to be in private life-kind, courteous, honest, brave, and always ready with a laugh. In fact, most foreigners in Turkey prefer the Turks socially to the other prevailing races there, the Jews, Greeks, Kurds, and Armenians.

From these conversations, which began about ten o'clock and lasted sometimes until four in the morning, I learned a good deal of what the Turk thinks of the present and future of his country.

The Turk is very depressed about the present situation. In so far as the question of food is concerned, a good deal of Turkey is. better off than the countries of Central Europe, but finances are disorganized and business pretty much at a standstill. The Turk does not feel that he was beaten in the war. Under the very noses of the British military police, who help to keep order in Constantinople, you can see lusty Turks strutting about wearing the Star of Gallipoli, which was awarded for distinguished service in the defense of the Dardanelles. And small boys sing the praises of the Turkish army in that ballad which begins:

"I came out of the camp and saw the
English vomiting blood."

No, the Turk does not feel that he was beaten. Ali the onus of defeat he lays on the Germans and Austrians. He will admit that his own judgment was

poor in siding with the weaker cause in the war, and that is all. He still believes that a Turk is a better soldier than any other man alive.

Moreover, the Turk resents the attitude of the Allies in holding him to any responsibility for fighting against them. Turkey was deluded by the Germans, says the Turk, and ought to be treated as an erring child rather than as a criminal. If the Allies are going to persist in their unjust attitude of sternness, well, the Turk will become a Bolshevik.

Of course this is silly bluff. Turkey will never go in for Bolshevism on a large scale. Bolshevism flourishes especially among industrial populations. Turkey is not an industrial nation. Furthermore, the whole training of the Turk unfits him to be a Bolshevik. What could be more antipathetical to Bolshevism than the Moslem religion, with its insistence on unquestioning obedience to authority?

The Turk is resigned to a considerable dismemberment of the old Turkish Empire. He hopes, however, to save at least the province of Anatolia and the city of Constantinople to be an independent Turkey. Of course he would like to be independent from now on. But he is fairly well resigned to the idea of having a mandatory Power placed over him for a few years, and his resignation comes to him the more easily since he has been allowed to believe that submission to a mandate will mean foreign aid in the rehabilitation of Turkey's finances and the development of commerce, with the advent of an era of prosperity.

Convinced that the defeat of the Germans and their allies was not his fault, the Turk is unrepentant for his past crimes. This unrepentance is augmented by the delay of the Peace Conference. When the armistice was signed, the Turk believed he would soon feel the iron hand. But ten months have passed since the armistice was declared and the Turk has not yet been punished. He is beginning to think he will go scot free. Moreover, he is beginning to think that his old game of playing off one Power against another will work again, and he is taking advantage of all the inevitable little jealousies among the Allies. An example of the sort of petty diplomacy at which the Turk is an adept occurred the other day when the Turks complained to Great Britain and France after RearAdmiral Bristol, commanding the American naval forces in Turkish waters, had warned the Turks that massacres must cease. Rear-Admiral Bristol's warning was informal, but the Turks hoped to arouse indignation among British and French authorities by making it appear that the American Commissioner had overstepped his powers.

Signs of general disorganization are seen on every hand in Turkey to-day. Recently bandits captured a British officer and five Indian soldiers guarding a caravan between Marsovan, which has an

American Protestant College, and Samsoon, on the Black Sea coast. It is decidedly risky for a foreigner to travel in most parts of the interior. Government officials are reported to be co-operating with agents of the Committee of Union and Progress in organizing bands of brigands for political purposes and supplying them with arms and ammunition. Perhaps the largest and worst of these bands is that headed by Mustapha Kemel Pasha, who is said to have a staff of forty-two Turkish officers.

Reports of new atrocites against Greeks and Armenians are coming in. The occupation of Smyrna by the Greeks has aroused the temper of the Turks to fighting pitch, and there have been many clashes between the two nationalities.

Judging by the reports of reliable Americans who were on the spot, the atrocities committed by the Turks during the war were horrible. Dr. George E. White, President of Anatolia College, at Marsovan, reports to the American Government that in five years the number of Armenians in his region has been reduced by violence or deportation from fourteen thousand to two thousand. Most of the survivors are women and children. The romantic Argonaut coast, from Sinope, the birthplace of Diogenes, to Cape Jason, was formerly populated mainly by Greeks. Thousands of these have been killed or deported by the Turks, and the few who are straggling back now find only ruined homes awaiting them. In Samsoon alone there were before the war two hundred and fifty thousand Greeks. Between one hundred and twenty-five thousand and one hundred and fifty thousand of these were deported by the Turks, and about seventydeported by the Turks, and about seventyfive thousand were killed.

It makes an American proud to see how his country is saving the lives of thousands of people almost every day in Asia Minor. The American Commission for Relief in the Near East is feeding half a million people in the Caucasus region alone, not to mention many thousands farther west. It is spending a million and a half dollars a month, and, among other items, is distributing five thousand tons of flour a month. It plans to carry on this work of first aid for about a year. But it hopes to keep in operation for ten or twelve years a number of orphanages which it has opened.

The extent of misery among children in Turkey is frightful. There are many waifs who are the offspring of Armenian mothers and Turkish fathers. In Urfa alone I was told that there are several thousand Armenian girls homeless after being released from Turkish harems. Most of them

are mothers or about to become such. Ordinarily the Armenians are settled farmers or traders, while the Kurds, who persecute them at the instigation of the persecute them at the instigation of the Turkish Government, are pastoral nomads. But at present the Armenians are nomads too, for most of them are

homeless. They are living like an army on the road. All the way from the Caucasus to Adana, Aleppo, and Jerusalem you find them on the byways, and Bag dad is full of them. They are too tired to think about vengeance. All they want is to get the scattered survivors of their families together again and to build up as well as they can their ruined homes.

This is not the place to discuss the merits of the knotty Armenian-Turkish question. Suffice it to say there are two sides to this question. No fair-minded man will defend the massacres of Armenians by Turks, but neither will he defend such atrocities as Armenians sometimes commit against Turks when they get the upper hand.

No doubt there are political and social reasons for the Turk's dislike of the Armenian, but the main cause of this animosity is economic. The Turk hates the Armenian for the same reason that the Russian hates the Jew. The Arme nian is more clever than the Turk, and in trade he is certainly more industrious. The Turk cares little for commercial life. A few Armenians go into a Turkish town and soon have most of the business in their hands. It is easier for the Turks to kill them and confiscate their wealth than to outdo the Armenians by using the latter's own business methods.

It must be said for the Turk that the Armenian's business methods are often questionable. There is a proverb in this connection which contains a good deal of truth. The saying goes: "The Armenian is never legally wrong and never morally right.”

The attitude of American missionaries toward the Armenians is very instructive. After deploring the cruelty of Turks to Armenians, your missionary host will say: "Be careful not to leave your watch or money about your room when you go outour servants are Armenians."

And again, after telling you a long narrative of Armenian suffering at the hands of the Turks which your mis sionary friend has heard from an Armenian, your friend will say-apropos of some domestic report that his Armenian servant has made to him-" Of course you can never believe anything Armenian says."

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Whatever the decisions of the Peace Conference in regard to Turkey may be, they ought to be based on a recognition of the following facts, which have been evident to nearly every investigator the Allies have sent to Turkey:

First, the Armenians are not yet capable of self-government.

Second, the Turks are not now capable of self-government, much less capable of governing other races.

Third, whatever arrangement is reached, it ought to be one which will prevent the Turks from bullying other peoples. And, equally important, it ought to be a settlement which will give no other people the power to bully the Turks.

WE

E camped in the little peach orchard at the foot of the Walpi mesa. For weeks we had been wandering, roofless and free, over the sunscorched deserts of the Navajo Indians. At the close of each day we spread our blankets amid the tinted shadows that welcomed with an unbelievable wealth of color the swift-footed night, that crept so quickly over the sands when once Johano-aï, the Sun God, had carried the blazing sun disk beyond the mountains to his lodge in the west-a lodge "built all of gems and shining shells" (so say the Navajo songs), whose glow we beheld on the farther side of the mountain-tops.

They were wonderful weeks, those weeks under the Arizona skies, for in them we quite lost the trail of the twentieth century and of our materialistic and commercial civilization. We seemed here a part of ancient America and of a world to which the European was but a newcomer; for we lived among those whose home this land had been for probably thousands upon thousands of years and whose life and thought seemed but a human expression of the land itself. A mythology as beautiful as that of the Greeks certainly less tinged with bloody tragedy-unfolded about us in sky, mountains, storm, and rainbow, and through it moved the living myth-makers, the dark-skinned first Americans, who tended their herds and flocks with song, and for whom the whole nature world was quickened with indwelling spirits and with symbolic presences. We had seen the gentle Female-Rain fall in soft, lifegiving showers on thirsting corn plants struggling in an arid land; we had caught the flash of bright javelins as the Lightning-Youths practiced afar at the world's edge, “learning to wield the lightning and to drive the rain;" we had listened to the onrushing approach of the MaleRain, hastening to hurl a torrent of water from a low-hanging thunder cloud. And we had gazed in wonder at the great double rainbow arching from horizon to horizon, circling the dwelling-place of gods and giving speed to the feet of the Divine-the rainbow, whose path leads beyond the mountains and amid which the blest, those perfect as when first the world was made, may sit down in "life unending and the peace that never passeth."

For us the sordid bargaining of our narrowed city lives, the fret and whirl of petty currents that bear us so far from our inner goal-all were forgotten in that enchanted land, guarded by the Four Sacred Mountains from which come to the Navajo "power, strength, and wisdom." Even the wrinkles and crow's feet that lined our white faces " as with the tracks of hunted animals" (so say the Indians) were burned away by the Sun God, whose "turquoise horse," pastured in the blue sky, "neighed so

BY NATALIE CURTIS

joyously." In the silence of the desert and the sweep of pure winds our souls were washed clean, till we too seemed true children of the Earth-Mother and the Sky-Father.1

"And is there no one," I thought to myself as from my nest of blankets at the foot of the Hopi mesa I looked up through the peach trees at the low-hanging desert stars" is there no one in authority who can realize before it is too late what the native life of America still holds of worth and beauty? No one who can stem the tide of Anglo-Saxon iconoclasm that would sweep the Hopi Indian villages from their ancient sites on the mesa-tops onto the arid sands below, interfere with all the thoughts and customs of the people, and prohibit the natural expression of that thought in the art of the race -in music, poetic ritual, and dramatic dance? How much longer will the American people go to Europe for inspiration and destroy the art that is at their own door?" My thoughts were the more keenly focused because our weeks of desert travel had been but the preamble, as it were, to the climax of our experience the week's encampment among the Hopi Indian villages for the witnessing of the two great dance dramas-the Snake and Flute Ceremonials. In one sense, this was not an opportune year for an intimate study of the Snake Ceremony, for all Arizona had heard of the approaching visit of Colonel Theodore Roosevelt with his sons Archie and Quentin. In consequence, there would be such crowds of white people as no Hopi mesa had probably ever before beheld. But to me the great ex-President's coming had more than a passing significance. Theodore Roosevelt was at that time probably the one public man whose word in, behalf of the Indians would be really heard and heeded by the rank and file of the American people. And now he was coming to Hopi-Land after a long horseback trip through the Navajo deserts; and I knew that his love of the open and his sympathy with all forms of primitive life would enable him to understand, as could no city-bred white man, the transition period through which were passing these children of an ancient race to whom the task of adjustment to a modern civilization with which they had nothing in common was as difficult as it was painful.

The news," Roosevelt is coming,' seemed to flash across the desert in all directions. It tingled in our ears with the fresh arrival of every white visitor speeding in from the nearest railway station to combine a glimpse of the great ex-President with the sight of the Hopi ceremony. It shook us out of our desert

dream and made us realize that we too The imagery quoted is from Indian song-poems.

were white people and that our sun-faded garments were no credit to civilization. Weeks in the Arizona desert do indeed restore one to an atavistic, primitive. state in outward appearance as in inner peace of mind. I was travel-stained from head to foot, and on the front of my khaki riding-skirt flared with placid disregard of all conventions a large round circle of black axle-grease, where the camp wagon had branded me for my affront of trying to climb in over the wheel. My companions called the round stain an Indian sun symbol," and it was not comforting to hear them jeer that nothing but a bath of gasoline could ever make me clean again.

The morning after our first night under the peach trees, as we sat about the campfire with our tin cups of coffee, I was told: "And you expect to talk with Colonel Roosevelt when he arrives this afternoon! He wouldn't. touch you with tongs, even though you are old friends! Don't you know that hundreds of white people will stare at you if they see you with him? You can't do anything with that riding-skirt but burn it!"

I thought of the Irishman who, on leaving for America, was told that he must take a trunk to put his clothes in, and answered: "And me go naked?" To burn any of my camp-apparel would raise the Irishman's question. I decided to achieve the bath of gasoline!

I ran across the sand-hills to the little schoolhouse to which the Hopi children trail down from the mesa-top to be taught in the ways of the white man. All the white employees of the Government school were busy with sapolio and scrubbing-brushes-so busy that they did not even look up from their work as they said, "Sorry, we can't bother about anything now. We're cleaning up for Roosevelt."" But so am I," I cried; yet they only went on scrubbing. So I ran to the school-teacher's house, to witness the same ardent "clean up" in progress and to be met with the same preoccupation. At last I spied a silent and empty automobile. A man on horseback seemed to be the owner. "I am going to meet Colonel Roosevelt," he said; "too busy to help you now. You can have as much gasoline as you like if you get it for yourself." I fetched a handleless cup from the school-house (the teacher had said, "You can have any cup you want if you won't bother me to get it for you now; I am getting ready for Roosevelt "), but I gazed at the automobile in despair. I was as ignorant of its inner workings as an Indian. Presently a handsome and deep-tanned young cowboy in blue overalls passed me, leading some horses.

"I wonder if you could get me some gasoline from this car?" I called. “I am allowed to have it. You see," I continued, confidentially, we are all trying to clean

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up in honor of Colonel Roosevelt-he is expected to-day some time." The young man smiled, and a few minutes later he lay in utter chivalry under the car, milking gasoline into my cup. I thanked him warmly and sped away. I was glad to see that he was just as weather-stained as I. As I climbed the crest of one of the sandhills I stopped short, open-mouthed in wonder. A stalwart figure on a cow pony was riding up the hill, alone and unattended; without any flourish of trumpets, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt had arrived! His sunburned face was partly shaded by a big Stetson hat, a red handkerchief fluttered at his throat, and he too looked as though gasoline might improve his khakis. I waved my sombrero and cried, "Hail to the chief!" No one had expected the great guest so soon, but it was like him to be ahead of the rest of the world.

He leaned from the saddle and we shook hands warmly. "This is capital!" he exclaimed. "But don't spill my gasoline," I cried. "Every one in Hopi-Land is trying to clean up for you!" He laughed heartily. "You must meet my boy," he said, and called loudly, "Archie!" and at this the knight in overalls appeared!

"We have met to-day before," he said, with a smile, and I glanced significantly at my cup. It was nearly empty. The desert sun was drinking up all my efforts, but I did not care; this curious little episode had given me the opportunity to welcome the famous visitor.

Presently we were joined by Father Douglas, a canon of the Cathedral at Fond du Lac, who was the camp-leader of our party and one of the most experienced outdoor men in America.

The Colonel turned to his son. "Now I really want to have some long talks with these people about these Hopi Indians; they have studied them. See that time is arranged in my schedule. You see," he said to us, "I am writing some articles about my Arizona travels for The Outlook, and I want them to be full of information. I am moving very rapidly, because I am going to South America shortly, and I can stay here only a very few days, so the sooner we talk the better. You don't know," he added to me, confidentially, when his son had gone back to his horses-" you don't know how my boys take care of me! It is really touching the way in which they arrange all the details of my trip and leave me free to see things and to write. They rode ahead to-day so that everything should be ready when I came in."

Indeed, there could be no finer tribute to a man who in one sense belonged to the whole American people than the devotion of his sons and the unity, purity, and strength of the family affection that characterized the private life of Theodore Roosevelt.

The next day found us closeted with the Colonel at his quarters in the little schoolhouse. This was the opportunity for which I had prayed under the peach trees. We freely told him of our hope

ot he would lend the power of his pen

to an appeal for the salvation of something of the native spirit of the aboriginal race--before it should be too late.

"You know that I am immensely interested in just this matter," he declared, with characteristic emphasis. "I want to write an article here that will be something more than a description of personal experience. Tell me what I ought to see. I always like to find students who have made a life study of certain subjects, and then I take my information from these sources. And I am glad to put for ward ideas, for somehow people do listen to me. I have at least the faculty of making myself heard!"

Colonel Roosevelt's many-sided and prolific culture was partly due to just this fact, that with a certain direct simplicity and impersonality he was always willing to absorb from students in all walks of life. And the accuracy of his memory gave him an astonishing command of data in subjects that no one would imagine he could know so much about without years of study.

We dwelt with the Colonel upon the historic and cultural value of the ancient Indian towns, which, had they been in Europe, would doubtless have been preserved unchanged as living records of successful communistic forms of government, whose social and ceremonial life offered a study of the greatest possible importance to our knowledge of mankind as a whole. And we asked: What right have we in "free America" to stretch forth an autocratic hand arbitrarily to change the village life of this ancient and peaceful folk?

We spoke of the characteristic architecture of the pueblos, by many centuries the oldest inhabited towns in America, whose flat-roofed, terraced houses are not only in utter harmony with natural surroundings, but constitute, from a practical standpoint, the most successful type of building for desert cities. High above the sands, the flat roof forms a porch for the open-air Indian, whereon at certain seasons he works, rests, receives his guests, eats, and sleeps. In North Africa, in Spain, in Asia Minor, where climatic conditions are similar to those in HopiLand, the same flat roof may be found. But we think we know better! In a land of burning sun, the slanting hot tin roofs of the Government dwellings, clinging to an inherited architecture of rain-soaked central Europe, cut their incongruous outline against a rainless sky, impotent in their longing to shed water! And the sun streamed into their big European windows, inviting myriads of flies, and forming a contrast indeed to the shadowed cool of the thick-walled Indian houses, whose open fireplaces insured at all seasons wholesome ventilation, in spite of high, narrow windows. And yet the white man's unpractical transplanted house, brought from far other climes, is urged upon the Indians as "civilized." With no eye to either beauty or fitness, our arbitrary standards (rarely, in the Indians' case, put to the test of experimentation first) are forced upon a people

who through centuries of experience have learned how to conquer conditions foreign to us. Improvements there might certainly be in the Indian's manner of life, but why not along those lines which nature has taught as most appropriate?

And this discussion brought us to the root of the whole matter. On the part of those sent out to teach the Indians there has never been any systematic study, first, of the Indians themselves, of the types of human culture that they represent, and of the ideas which they have evolved; second, of the widely varying conditions, climatic and industrial, of Indian reservations; and, third, of the kinds of education best fitted to the needs of the different tribes in different localities. And until some great foundation like the Carnegie, Sage, or Rockefeller shall endow funds for a study of this kind, and until the whole matter of whiteman control of Indians can be lifted out of politics, our efforts at Indian education are bound to be like the rain-shedding roofs in the desert-misfits in spirit as in fact. We agreed with the Colonel that there is nothing finer than the Christian religion," but he agreed with us that if we would build true civilization among a people different from ourselves there must first be an interchange of ideas between the two races.

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Next day I rode over to the village of Qraibi, an Indian town whose site is at least a thousand years old; it is now crumbling into ruin through a division of its inhabitants over the question of sending their children to Government schools. Here we witnessed a part of the Flute Ceremony, a dramatized invocation of water for the springs, wherein the performers wore symbols of the sun, the rainbow, and the blossoming earth. It was one of the most poetic of the Indian rituals, contrasting in its lyric beauty with the dramatic intensity of the Snake Cere

mony.

Meanwhile Father Douglas, who had remained at Walpi, took Colonel Roosevelt through the villages of the Walpi mesa and brought him to the house of Nampéyo, probably the best living Indian potter and surely one of the great artists of America. There the Colonel saw spread before him an art that antedates the coming of the white man by thousands of years, and he exclaimed in wonder at the wealth of creative imagination and at the skill of eye and hand that had wrought these bowls, urns, and jars with such symmetry and beauty of design. Though Nampéyo's work is found in great collections and in museums, few know the Indian artist who, now nearly blind, is passing on the tradition of her matchless craft to her daughter.

Nampeyo received the Colonel with all the simple dignity of the Indian hostess, murmuring with low laughter and polite pleasure at his praise of her work, and adding to the great jar that he had bought another one, as a gift to him who had been "the Great White Father in Washington."

On the morning of the Snake Dance we urged each other awake in our camp