Las Palmas Camp, where we stopped, was something of a cross between a camp and a hotel. It already had a hall with decorative plants in tubs, with swings and soft divans. This made it resemble a hotel and justified the traveller's filling his heart with pride. (Remember? "Let your heart fill with pride when you utter the name of the hotel in which you stopped!") On the other hand, the price of the room was not high, which made it clear that Las Palmas was, after all, a camp. In short, it was a convenient haven. Its owner was an Austrian German who thirty years ago had come to America in a third-class cabin. Now, in addition to the camp he owns also the California Hotel, a four-story building with a cafe and a table d'hote. Therefore, the optimistic American smile, which makes him kin to Mr. Max Factor and other fortunate ones, never leaves his face.

El Centro with its cracked sidewalks and brick arcades, El Centro, depressing city of exploitation and big business, was still in California. Benson, which we reached on the evening of the next day, was three-quarters of the way across Arizona.

To Benson we drove past huge fields of cactus. This was giant cactus. It grew in groups and singly and resembled cucumbers enlarged a thousand times and placed end up. They were filled with coombs, just like Corinthian palms, and with hair, like monkey paws. They have fat stubby little hands. These appendages make these giant cactuses extraordinarily expressive. Some of them pray, having raised their arms to high heaven, others embrace each other, still others nurse their children, and others simply stand in proud tranquillity, looking down on the travellers who pass them by.

The cactuses live just as at one time the Indian tribes lived. Where one tribe lives, there is no place for another. They do not mix.

The cactus desert was succeeded by a sand desert, a real Sahara with dunes striped by shadows or pockmarked, but an American Sahara. A splendid road crossed it with oases, where, instead of camels, automobiles rested, where there were no palms, but, instead of a spring, petrol streams flowed.

Benson has a population of eight hundred and fifty people. What do they do here in the desert? Why did they convene on this particular spot of the globe?

We learned that here was a DuPont powder factory. DuPont is one of the real masters of America, the same DuPont who makes such remarkable celluloid films, combs, and explosives!

What can people do here in this ordinary American small town, with several petrol stations, with two or three drug-stores, and a grocery store where everything is sold ready-made—the bread is sliced, the soup is cooked, the crackers are wrapped in cellophane—what can people do here, if not go mad?

In the store where we bought sliced bread, prepared soup, and a cheese which had already been eaten (at any rate, it looked like it), we were told that business had improved, that there was no unemployment in the city, because the powder factory had begun to work full speed.

When Mr. Adams, seizing the owner of the store by the lapel of his coat, began to find out from him what people did in Benson, the owner answered:

"You know what they do—they smoke Chesterfields, they drink Coca-Cola, they sit in the drug-store. They have money. Somebody needs powder."

Somebody needs powder, somebody needs copper, the munitions industry has improved.

The next morning we arrived in Bisbee, a town in the hills. Here are the copper mines of Arizona. The houses are located on steep inclines. Long wooden stairways lead to them. In the square of the city stands 1 red monument to a worker made of crude copper, a monument to the unknown worker who made big money for the owners of the mines. In a drug-store on the tables are displayed sugar bowls beaten out of thick red copper. Right outside the city is a gigantic crater seemingly made by nature. As a matter of fact, it has been dug out by people. This is the place where the old copper mines used to be.

Later we found ourselves in a desert populated by cactuses of a kind we had never seen before. Out of a large ball of pins a long blooming branch shoots up. When we passed this desert we found ourselves in another one, where telegraph poles were grown and nothing else. Another day passed, and from the desert of telegraph poles we passed to a desert overgrown with advertisements, bill-boards, announcements, and all kinds of written, drawn, and printed pleadings about a town called White City.

Every two miles, and then more frequently, bill-boards hysterically invited travellers to White City. The bill-boards promised such joys that even if White City were the pseudonym for Nice or Sochi it could not justify the insane enthusiasm of the pleas, demands, and prayers that the little town be visited.

Overwhelmed by such insistence, we swerved from the course of our journey. From Arizona we passed into the state of New Mexico, and the nearer we approached to White City the more shrill became the advertisements. Finally, we learned that White City was founded by the famous cowboy, Jimmy White, who discovered the even more famous Carlsbad Caves.

Twenty years ago Jimmy White, who had not yet founded the city that now bears his name, noticed that thick smoke was rising through a cleft in the earth. Drawn to it, he went up closer and saw that this was not smoke but an incredibly large flight of bats emerging from somewhere under the earth. The cowboy bravely ventured into the crevasse and discovered under the earth colossal stalactite caves. Soon thereafter the caves were declared to be national property, and efforts were made to prepare them for convenient surveying. The caves were entered on the list of national parks of the United States. As for Jimmy White, he was not satisfied with the fame of a discoverer and a geographer, so right near the caves he himself founded a camp of several houses under the proud name of White City, and filled space for hundreds of miles around with announcements and pronouncements about his city.

For hundreds of miles around was desert, a real rattlesnake desert. We were certain that we would have to crawl underground on all-fours. Therefore, when we drove up to the caves we were amazed at what we saw. Remarkable, indeed, was this vision of two elevators, two excellent elevators, with beautiful cabins, which, emitting a pleasant city drone, dropped us seven hundred feet underground. On top were stores where Indian souvenirs were being sold, and an excellent information bureau, with rest rooms which would have done credit to a first-class hotel. Here was a bit of desert that was ultramodern, electric, with a loud-speaker.

It takes a whole day to inspect the caves. But we were late, so we took part only in the second half of the excursion. We went down in elevators to the very bottom of the caves, where we found an underground restaurant. The luncheon was not in any way remarkable, but one must take into consideration the fact that produce is brought here from afar. Nevertheless, here was a luncheon which included hot coffee in thick cups, tasteless bread wrapped in cellophane, sandwiches and California-tasting oranges—that is, not too tasty—a real American luncheon in a place located several hundred feet under the surface of the earth.

Then we were all assembled, stood up in a long line, and the guide, dressed in the green semi-military uniform of a national park employee, went ahead. The procession was closed by another employee, whose duty it was to see that no one was lost on the way.

As we moved on, passing from one cavern to another, ahead of us electricity was lighted and behind us it was put out. Everywhere the light was masked, its source hidden and so disposed that it illuminated the caverns to the best advantage.

Before us opened grandiose decorations—Gothic arches, small cathedrals hidden in niches, lacy many-toned stalactites hanging from cupolas. The caverns were larger than the largest theatre in the world. The stalagmites formed curly miniature Japanese gardens, or rose shining monuments of lime. The stalactites hung in huge rocky mantillas with folds. Here stood chalky Buddhas, the models of stage decorations, petrified mirages and aurora borealis—all that the human imagination can muster was here, including even a small stalagmite which looked like a machine-gun.