The Land Of Journey's Ending

Austin writes about the high plateau country lying between the Colorado and Rio Grande rivers, the traditional homeland of many Indian peoples--the Pueblo, the Zuni, the Hopi, and the Navajo.

THE LAN OK JOURNEYS ENDING BY MARY AUSTIN AUTHOR OF THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN, THE AMERICAN RHYTHM, ETC., ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN EDWIN JACKSON THE CENTURY CO. NEW YORK LONDON Copyright, 1924, by THE CENTURY Co. Printed in TJ. S. A, AGAINST THE EVENING LIGHT THE SAHUAROS HAVE A STATELY LOOK To DANIEL T. MAcDOUGAL OF THE CACTUS COUNTRY AUTHORS PREFACE This being a book of prophecy, a certain apprecia tion of the ritualistic approach is assumed for the reader. The function of all prophecy is to discern truth and declare it, and the only restriction on the prophet is that his means shall be at all points capable of sustaining what he discovers. Anybody can write fact about a country, but nobody can write truth who does not take into account the sounds and swings of its native nomenclature. There is a peculiar flourish to the names of dis tinctive places, as of eminent men, proceeding out of the heart of their life. Who would have the most revered President called anything but Abraham And who would not readily pick up the tune to which New Mexico was settled, from the exactly sounded rhythms of Don Juan de Onate, Gobernador, Capitan Generale y Adelantado de Nueve Mexico not one syllable of which is pronounced in English as it is spelled. You would know at once that such a founder would choose his capital badly and move it two or three times. Thus you will save yourself much time by consulting the glossary at the back whenever in these pages you strike the Spanish trail. Vll viii AUTHORS PREFACE Not that even a glossary can achieve perfection. For the Land of Journeys Ending is it not appro priate that it should do so has dragged and elided the sixteenth-century Spanish in which thejourney began, almost to the softness of aboriginal name words, which are spelled in Spanish but in pronouncing are pushed back upon the palate like ripe fruit. Still, you will get a great deal more out of my book by attending to the Spanish accents and vowels, since there are aspects of every country impossible satisfactorily to describe ex cept in rhythms that have a derivative relation to the impression the land makes on its inhabitants. Being a book of prophecy of the progressive acul turation of the lands people, this is also a book of topography. And the topography of the country be tween the Colorado and the Rio Grande cannot be expressed in terms invented for such purpose in a low green island by the North Sea. A barranca is terri fyingly more than an English bank on which the wild thyme grows an arroyo resembles a gully only in being likewise a water gouge in the earths surface, and we have no word at all for canada, half-way between an arroyo and a canon, which though, naturally, you have been accenting the syllable that best expresses the trail of the white man across the Southwest is really pronounced can-yon. There are also terms such as abra, playa, encerro, which cannot be Englished at all except by the use of AUTHORS PREFACE ix more words than you will have time for when you attempt to inquire your way about that country. You might, indeed, without some acquaintance with them, be looking for a mechanician unexpectedly, and be told to keep right along this road, here, until you come to an arroyOj not one of these little arroyos, but a regu lar hondo, then you keep up along the foot of the barranca until you come to a cienaga, then you go up along the loma until you cometo a cicnaguilla, and you find a placita . . . but if you read my book conscien tiously, you will have nothing to fear. If, elsewhere, I have been less explicit topographi cally, in an attempt to describe the country by the effect it produces on the author, that also is within the prov ince of a prophet of human nature, which lives so much more by effects produced than by facts described. Also, if you find holes in my book that you could drive a car through, do not be too sure they were not left there for that express purpose...