The St. Johns herald., 1897-08-21
THE BAD LANDS.
Strange and Interesting Feat
 ures of Arizona.

ufeS Of Af1ZODds
 The Albuquerque Democrat of re- cent date contains the following article descriptive of portion of the neigh boring county of Navajo:
 The ''bad Iands' of Montana and Dakota are probably known in 8 general way to many Albu- querque people who never heard hat tthere were tracts of land in Arizona which are in many re- spects similar. although much more interesting w. O Secor. the eivi engineer, recently re- turned from trip through part of this strange waste, and. in response to query gave the tol- lowing account of 1t:
 Did 1 see anything of interest on my last trip? I saw number of things that interested me and some that think would interest geol- ogiSt. Indeed, it is a very interesting country but if were choosing summer resort, know of two or three places would prefer to the cOun- try we passed over during the last two weeks.
 We left the Santa Fe Pacific railroad at St Joseph and travelled nOrtherly towards the Mo- qui and Navajo Indian reservations for the pur- pose of seeing the country, and we saw it. When we were unable to travel by wagon we used sad dle horses or went on foot As driver and guide to water we employed a young Mormon who has run cattle and horses over that country for the past ten years And if any one thinks a guide unnecessary and starts to cross that coun- try he is likely to make several dry camps,' have travelled on foot and horseback over this western country for the past eighteen years and never found water in such unlikely places as i'll the country from which I have just returned and was much surprised to see that the Maya jOes are much ahead of the whites 1n caring for their watering places. Every Navajo spring that we saw was carefully walled in and covered with small pond below that held the overflow whe.e their stock watered, while the springs he longing to whites were left open and the water unfit to drink.
 At nearly all the Indian springs we saw squaws at work weaving blankets, while the children herded the sheep and goats.
 'While camping at one of the springs an 1ndi- an rode up and warned us that the spring and all the land as far as he could see belonged to him. In proof of which he showed formid- able looking document which read as follows:
 "I hereby give and sell to Black Jack this spring and all the land he can see from the top of the mesa, together with the right % shoot anybody that disputes 1t, for thg sum of S7 30
 (Sigued) JIM ONENS.'
 On "Wednesday. July 2S, we rode about twenty miles to the north of Black Jacks spring, and aft winding our way through canyons and oyer the tooth Ills of volcanic mesas for several hours We found ourselves riding up 8 high grassy plateau that seemed to have its northern terminus in the sky. We rode up this plateau for about five miles: when we came to wFat ap- peared to be U top of the earth The plateau ended abruptly in an almost vertical bluff fully 1000 feet high while below us lay valleys, hills and mcsas, with here and there an Indian corn field. It was as fine pal annie view as ever saw
 For several d ys we saw nothing but rugged volcanic mesas and bad lands Tben we were taken 10 see what was represented as e deposit of sulphur. This was in the midst of the worst bad land country we had seen. We found the sulphur all right, but after digging a little we invariably came upon petrifed log and found the sulphur deposited around the log or part of it.
 ''In this vicinity we found trunks of trees Iy ing so near the surface that the tops were ex-