"You are leaving New Mexico. You are entering Arizona."

It sounds as if you were leaving the earth and entering heaven.

We rolled cheerily across the desert, having completely forgotten yesterday's horrors. It seemed incredible that there were such things as slush, snow, and frost in the world. Mr. Adams, who had a good night's sleep in Gallup and who had eaten well on the road, was in excellent spirits. He was full of ideas—and dying to talk. We discussed ten different subjects. We listened to Mr. Adams's ideas on the situation in Germany after the fascist coup, on the state of schools in America, on Roosevelt's chances in the next elections, and about the latest session of the Pacific Institute.

But all this seemed not enough for Mr. Adams. He kept looking impatiently at the road in the hope of finding a man with an uplifted thumb. But only red sand greeted the machine. There were no people in the desert. Fortunately, Mr. Adams was rescued at that point by nature itself, to whom indeed he yielded the reserve of emotions that was tearing him apart.

We were passing through the painted desert.

Smooth sandhills stretched to the very horizon like a stormy ocean whose waves have suddenly turned to stone. They crept upon each other, formed crests and thick round folds. They were magnificent, beautifully painted by nature in blue, pink, reddish-brown, and pastel colours. The tones were blindingly pure.

The word " desert" is frequently used as a symbol of monotony. The American desert is unprecedently varied. The face of the desert changed every two or three hours. Hills and cliffs in the form of pyramids, towers, recumbent elephants and antediluvian reptiles passed by.

But ahead of us was something even more remarkable.

We entered a reservation of petrified forest, fenced off by barbed wire. At first we did not notice anything special, but upon looking closely we saw emerging from the sand and the gravel, stumps and trunks of trees lying everywhere. Coming closer, we discerned that the gravel itself was composed of small particles of a petrified forest.

In this spot several scores of million years ago a forest grew. Not long ago this forest was discovered in the shape of broken petrified trunks. It is an astounding spectacle to find in the midst of the great silence of the desert prone trunks of petrified trees which have preserved the outward appearance of the most ordinary reddish-brown wooden trunks. The process of altering the wood of the trees into salt, lime, and iron had gone on for millions of years. These trees have acquired the hardness of marble.

On the reservation is a small museum where the bits of petrified wood are prepared. They are sawed and polished. The surface of the segment, while preserving all the lines of the wood, begins to gleam with its red, blue, and yellow veins. There is no marble or malachite that can rival the beauty of a polished bit of petrified wood.

At the museum we were told that these trees are a hundred and fifty million years old. The museum itself was probably no more than a year old. It was a small but quite modern building, with metal frames for doors and windows, with a water main, with hot and cold water. Emerging from such a little building, you would expect to find a subway, an airport, and a department store; instead, you find at once, without the slightest transition, a desert extending for hundreds of miles.

The reservation of the petrified forest is carefully guarded, so that one cannot take along a single grain of sand. But as soon as we emerged beyond the borders of the reservation, we saw a petrol station surrounded by a fence made up helter-skelter out of the petrified trees. Here was carried on a lively trade in pieces of wood at fifteen cents and up. A handicraft man with a motor that roared throughout the desert feverishly manufactured souvenirs in the form of brooches and bracelets. He sawed, sharpened, polished. Was it worth while to lie for so many millions of years in order to be transformed into an unprepossessing brooch with the inscription "Souvenir of..."?

We put several pieces of wood away into our automobile and, imagining how in due time they would travel inside of our valises across the ocean, set out again on our journey.

Not far from the little factory, on the edge of the road, thumb uplifted, stood a man with a suitcase.

We have already said that Americans are very gregarious, good-natured, and ever obliging. When you are being helped, let us say, by having your automobile pulled out of a rut or a ditch, it is done simply, modestly, quickly, without any calculation as to thanks, even verbal gratitude. The American helps you, cracks a joke, and goes on.

The uplifted thumb, as everyone knows, indicates a request for transportation. This signal has become as inseparable a part of American automobile travel as road signs which indicate curves, speed limit, and railroad crossing.

For a writer, a fisher of souls and subjects, such a custom presents great conveniences. The heroes come into your automobile of their own free will and at once willingly tell you the story of their lives.

We stopped. The man with the suitcase had to go to San Diego, California. We were going in the same direction as far as Flagstaff. Our new fellow traveller got into the machine, placed his baggage on his lap and, having waited for the question as to who he was and where he Wane from, began to tell us his story.

He hailed from the state of Massachusetts. There he had worked all his life as a locksmith. Five years ago he had moved to another city, lost his job right away, and with that his old life came to an end. A new life began for him, one to which he could not accustom himself. He was con-stantly travelling in search of employment. He had many times crossed the country from ocean to ocean, yet he had found no job. Occasionally he would get a lift in an automobile; most of the time, however, he travelled with tramps in railway freight cars. That was faster. But he himself was not a tramp. That he reiterated several times stubbornly and emphatically. Evidently he had been taken for a tramp more than once.

He received no relief because he had no permanent residence.

"I often meet people like myself," he said, "and among them there are even men with college education—doctors, lawyers. I became friendly with one such doctor, and we travelled together. Then we decided to write a book. We wanted the whole world to know how we live. We began to record every day everything that we had seen. We wrote down quite a lot. I had heard that if you publish a book you get well paid for it. Once we came to the state of Nebraska. Here we were caught in the freight car. Our manuscript was found. It was torn in pieces. And we were beaten up and thrown out. That is how I live."

He did not complain. He merely told his tale, with the same simplicity with which the young marine had told us how he and his friend had met some girls in Chicago and unexpectedly stayed there a whole week. The marine did not brag. The unemployed did not seek sympathy.

A man had fallen out of society. Naturally, he felt that the social order should be changed. But what should be done about it?

"You must take the wealth from the rich."

We began to listen even more attentively. He angrily struck the back of his seat with his large dirty fist and repeated :

"Take away their money! Take away their money and leave them only five million apiece! Give the unemployed a piece of land, so they can raise their own food and eat it. And leave the others only five million apiece !"

We asked him whether five million was not perhaps too much.

But he was adamant.

"No, they must have at least five million apiece. You can't make it any less."