Page:Percival Lowell - an afterglow.djvu/164

Percival Lowell

One week ago today Sykes' son and I started on an exploring expedition to Sycamore Cañon, a terra incognito considered the wildest and roughest in Arizona. We left too bright and early for me, and it took us three hours to get to the outer rim of the Cañon. Thence we descended for an hour and a half. We were rewarded, not by the Cañon itself, for we only got down about half way or a thousand feet, but by what I went for, trees and shrubs. We entered by what I named Maple Creek because of the numbers of western sugar maple we found there, not large and imposing trees like our Eastern variety but pretty, snubnosed, f oliaged ones. Walnuts were there and great alders a hundred feet high; the flora resembling that of Oak Creek only more so. By the time we had reached what we deemed must be our Ultima Thule we suddenly came upon a deserted log cabin beside a spray of clear water and what especially delighted me, one of the new Juniper I had particularly sought, and with fruit! Prof. Sargent had enjoined me to find such. The tree was the one I discovered in Oak Creek but that was fruitless. The spot was also a walnut grove but the nuts resembled pig nuts rather than the nut of Jove (Juglans). After eating a frugal lunch we toiled back. I should have said that our introduction to the strange flora came in the guise of a J. pachyphlora (you 126