A portion of this stage-coach journey led us over the flank of the great San Francisco Mountain.  The isolated position, striking similarity, and almost uniform altitude of its four peaks, rising nearly thirteen thousand feet above the sea, have long made them famous.  Moreover, they are memorable for having cast a lurid light upon the development of this portion of our planet.  Cold, calm, and harmless though they now appear, the time has been when they contained a molten mass which needed but a throb of Earth’s uneasy heart to light the heavens with an angry glare, and cover the adjoining plains with floods of fire.  Lava has often poured from their destructive cones, and can be traced thence over a distance of thirty miles; proving that they once served as vents for the volcanic force which the thin crust of earth was vainly striving to confine.  But their activity is apparently ended.  The voices with which they formerly shouted to one another in the joy of devastation have been silenced.  Conquered at last, their fires smolder now beneath a barrier too firm to yield, and their huge forms appear like funeral monuments reared to the memory of the power buried at their base.  Another fascinating sight upon this drive was that of the Painted Desert whose variously colored streaks of sand, succeeding one another to the rim of the horizon, made the vast area seem paved with bands of onyx, agate, and carnelian.

[Illustration:  THE LUNCH STATION.]

About the hour of noon we reached a lunch-station at which the stages, going to and from the Canon, meet and pass.  The structure itself is rather primitive; but a good meal is served to tourists at this wayside halting-place, and since our appetites had been sharpened by the long ride and tonic-giving air, it seemed to us the most delicious of repasts.  The principal object of one of the members of our party, in making the journey described in these pages, was to determine the advisability of building a railroad from Flagstaff to the Canon.  Whether this will be done eventually is not, however, a matter of vital interest to travelers, since the country traversed can easily be made an almost ideal coaching-route; and with good stages, frequent relays of horses, and a well-appointed lunch-station, a journey thus accomplished would be preferable to a trip by rail.

[Illustration:  HANCE’S CAMP.]

[Illustration:  OUR TENT AT HANCE’S CAMP.]

Night had already come when we arrived at our destination, known as Hance’s Camp, near the border of the Canon.  As we drove up to it, the situation seemed enchanting in its peace and beauty; for it is located in a grove of noble pines, through which the moon that night looked down in full-orbed splendor, paving the turf with inlaid ebony and silver, and laying a mantle of white velvet on the tents in which we were to sleep.  Hance’s log cabin serves as a kitchen and dining-room for travelers, and a few guests can even find lodging