Point Sublime

The poetic chap who named many of the interesting sights and points in Grand Canyon was inspired by the Gods when he named Point Sublime. When you stand on the point and associate all you feel inside of you and all you see about you, Point Sublime has a heavenly ring.

Point Sublime is on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. You turn west from State Highway 69 a few miles south of the Checking Station and follow a dirt road into the forest. Your way is lined with heavy growth of the Kaibab Forest. Gay aspen with arms entwined bid you welcome with the pleasant rustle of summer dresses. Pine trees cluster about your path, shouldering each other to get a better look at you. You come across small meadows, where a deer will look up, almost annoyed by the intrusion. Flowers carpet the forest, having a high old time in the sunlight.

And so it is for 16.6 miles (to be very accurate and quote the formal sign back on the main highway calling your attention to this delightful side trip.) And then you are out on Point Sublime, on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. It's the same old canyon, with delicate differences in shading, color and formation. The forest, through which you have just passed, doesn't leave you on the Rim. It spills over the Rim, down the sides of the canyon like a small boy sliding down a haystack.

Off to the south you glimpse the river, grinding away. Great spires rise out in front of you so close you feel you could reach out and touch them, but when you lean over the point just a little you look a mile straight down. And then you look another mile from the bottom to the spire out in front of you. You can look south, east and west. Out there and below you is a view of the Grand Canyon you'll see from no other place but Point Sublime... R. C.

"There are many sounds-the whispering of ripplets on the little shreds of sandy beach, the troubled arguing of small waves in the recesses among the rocks . . . the basso profundo of huge columns of water rushing around and over the boulders."

Toroweap

(Continued from Page 11) Visible eastward at the Kaibab and Bright Angel. Through an opening here and there in the western sky the sun sent a column of light to fire some promontory and make it stand out in the general gloom like a still blazing tower among ruins already burnt and smoldering murkily. This scene was grand and devastating enough to the spirit without the abyss that cut through it, a deep slash through a long valley between high cliff-crowned bastions. This long valley winding away to the Kaibab must have been the course of the River when it went along more leisurely, before it began to pound and cut and grind into the earth's viscera.

If you stand on the edge of that earth wound and stare down into it there will be a feeling that your world is falling apart, that its solidity is no more, that all previous conceptions of space and mass have been erased. Straight down you look, thirty-five hundred feet of sheer red and brown and magenta cliffs cut as with a sharp knife, to the bright curving ribbon of water that turns out to be a roaring, lashing tremendous beast of a thing when you get to stand beside it. Three Empire State Buildings you could stand on top of each other in this deep canyon before you would have something there you could reach out and touch. You think you can throw a stone into the stream below. Try it. Your stone is only swallowed up in space and silence.

If you have stood alone on the brink of the Canyon at Toroweap you will want to rush back to the cities and towns, to the faces and voices of human beings; for here in this solitude of terrible depths and heights you have felt the full weight of a universe on your bare soul. Here more than anywhere on earth, you need the armor of human companionship; the voice of a friend, the touch of a hand, the echoing of footsteps not your own. Alone, you will see this canyon as something obscene, ghastly; brutal; a thing you should not have looked upon, for all your life it will haunt you.

After you have looked and felt yourself pulled toward it as by hypnotic force and come away struggling as though on the edge of a maelstrom, you will not want to make that journey down into the Canyon. You will not want to, but if that is the thing you came here especially to do, as it was with me, you will do it, as I did only, I hope you have better luck finding the way than I had.

The Kents told me it would take about two hours to get from the rim to the bottom of the canyon. There was less than that between me and darkness, but I started down the trail with confidence. There is really no trail; the only way down is where once the gorge was filled with lava from the great black volcano on the north rim called Vulcan's Throne. The river gradually carried the fill away, leaving a loose slide of lava rock and debris below the Throne.

A few hundred yards down this rattling ridge and the muscles in the front of my legs began to weaken and tremble. They are a different set of muscles than one uses to go forward or upward, and a set one rarely uses. Still, though the gloom was deepening all the time, aided by the clouds, I had no misgivings.

There was no time to stop and let those weary leg muscles recoup. The only release from tension they got was when the loose rock and pebbles were so crumbly I could slide down many yards without putting forth any effort. (Were it not for the sheer ledges at the bottom of the slide one could make good time down with a board fitted to the fundament. When my leg muscles became so exhausted I could no longer hold myself erect the seat of my pants took much of the responsibility for getting me down.) Darkness had nearly settled over the canyon and the clouds had blotted out the narrow strip of sky when I reached the bottom ledges, which from the top had looked as if they were at the very foot of the slide. When at last I peered over them the river seemed still far away below. Bud had told me there was only one place to get off this ledge, and told me how to reach that place. It had all sounded simple enough up there and it is simple enough once you've been down it but now in the deepening gloom all the ridges of the slide looked alike and all seemed to end in that last jagged ledge that kept me from the river whose roar was now a fury of sound, submerging cliffs and lava stones. A little of panic

mixed itself with my trembling fatigue, but I was determined I would not rest until I reached the river's edge. Each time I climbed up the loose slopes to get around a jog in the ledge I came nearer the point of exhaustion but no nearer the river.

As if the "Bigger Gods" of the Indians had pitted every wile and weapon against the little interloper who was me, there were in addition to the demoralizing gloom and the terrorizing grandeur a thousand little things to aggravate and slow along the way. Every plant has a thorn or a claw or a sharp pointed blade. Even the grass and weed seeds have pointed tips that stick in one's clothing and irritate the sweated skin. Everywhere are fingers reaching out to claw and scratch, everywhere are blades and points to cut and jab. And on apparently innocent flowering plants there is a clinging, sharp fuzz that sticks to the skin and clothing. I saw no animate thing along these black clotted slopes. I had no time to imagine scorpions, rattlesnakes, centipedes, gila monsters or any of the other things with poisoned teeth or fangs or prongs, nor did I see any of them. But once in the dusk as I let myself down over a six-foot ledge which was hollowed out into a kind of cave underneath, I saw what was either an enormous tarantula, or a plant so much in the image of one that my fancy got the better of me. Whatever the thing was, my feet scarcely touched the ground as I came down less than a yard from it. I did not stop even for a second look, but bounded down the slope and away.

Finally almost too late, for I can hardly hold myself upright any longer-I find the place to get down. At least it looks like my only exit from a night on the jagged"There is really no trail; the only way down is where once the gorge was filled with lava from the volcano on the North Rim called Vulcan's Throne.

rock with that river moaning down below all night and me with a driving thirst; but at any moment I may find my way barred again by a ledge. Worse, I may not see the ledge until the sliding torrent of rocks that carries me down has swept me over the brink. Like a man in the last stages of drunkenness I forsake caution and abandon myself to the loose stones and am carried down swifty, now standing, now sitting, now sprawling helplessly, to land in a dry flood channel. From here I make my way with agonizing slowness over ledges that would have stopped me in the daylight, and eventually I stand beside the hurrying river.

This Colorado "Silvery Colorado," "River of Mysteries" it is a savage, beige-colored puma that glides quietly along the canyons for miles, suddenly to lash out as here at Lava Falls; to lash out suddenly in bounding anger and beat against the bases of its milehigh walls, as if stricken with madness in realization of its capacity.

Drink of that silvery stream! Take great draughts of it into your burning, wracked, tortured body. At first it has the sweetness of life given back. It is when you become sated you decide that this is not water, it is epileptic mud. You feel the sharp sand grinding down your gullet, sand that boils up among the rocks where you lie on your belly to drink. This is the stuff of cliffs and mountains, mesas, and the bottoms of flood-drenched caves. The very land insinuates itself into your being and now you are surrounded inside and out with what God uses to make western scenery.

Crawl away from the swishing water and try to find yourself a place to stretch out. At last you do find a bit of sand among the sharp rocks, where, by curving your body just so, you can avoid the worst edges. The blankets you lugged down the murderous slope are good for little but to cushion you against the harshness of the rocks. You lie naked, panting, for even though the wind mingles its sighing with the sounds of the river there is no cool breath in it and your muscles are still burning. Now the pounding of the river is no susurration lulling you to sleep; it is a malicious thing, a baring of black teeth, a rattling of hot breath sucked into frothing whirlpools. Your sweating "You can go via the pleasantly passable Bullrush road, or you can follow the Vermilion Cliffs to Short Creek then turn south. Either way, your road becomes somthing of a double cattle trail as you approach Tuweap Valley."

Arizona Pattern

(Continued from Page 15) Right, a view of Round Park on the top of the Chiricahuas. To the West, Sulphur Springs valley. Left, an old log cabin in the mountains, still in use, built in the days of the pioneers and the warring Apaches.

Mr. Click's ranch had apparently for centuries been an Indian city, there was no holding them.

We picnicked in the canyon, a lonely spot, little known even to us natives. There the Indians seem to have left but yesterday their apartment houses, built far up in the rim rock that overlooks the San Simon.

The caves in the cliffs had been converted into rooms by walls, still standing, of yucca stalks set vertically across the openings. In the rock ledge extending out and down from the caves, the children found fresh water yesterday's storm had left in the hollows worn by generations of squaws who ground their maize as they squatted on this platform hung between sky and canyon floor.

A few days later found us traveling through Cave Creek again, to see the old log cabin built literally at the risk of their scalps, by the Reed family. Its handsome beams and shakes, mellowed by time, stand as solidly as the day they were first set in position. With a real feeling for the charm of the old place, the present owners, Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Clark, have made only one change in it. They have cut windows in the walls that were originally built without an opening through which arrows might have come whizzing in from the dark. Here again, as throughout our region, is the mingling of past and present. Near the old cabin built in difficult days, is the modern home place, a comfortable white cottage, with wide porches, gay flowers and a cool green pool, fed by a canyon spring.

The road after passing the Clarks', climbs the mountains to Rustler Park, eight thousand feet up. Horse thieves, cattle rustlers and assorted desperadoes in frontier days hid their plunder among the tall pines of the Park. Today the same pines look down on yodeling Boy Scouts, and in winter ski enthusiasts drawn from El Paso, Lords-burg, Douglas, Bisbee, Tucson and points still further away.

During the progress of the Expedition, we came to see ourselves, through Mr. Barton's eyes in a new light. He maintains that our lives may not be as precarious as in the days of the frontier, but our region just naturally produces colorful characters, and our ways of making a living are ingenious and entertaining. He lists in evidence: The Lee brothers-six foot lengths of muscle, hunting skill and business enterprise. Predatory game flees at the mention of their names, and hunters in both Americas pay a price for the strain of hounds they have developed for the chasing of big cats.

The Duffner brothers-scholars and scientists, selling their rare moths and butterflies to collectors and to the Smithsonian Institute. Mr. Otto, who is an authority on the occasional migration of tropical Mexican parrots into the Chiricahuas, has been ininvited by the Smithsonian to lecture on the subject.

Mrs. May a remarkable woman who lives miles from a neighbor, up a boulder strewn creek, in a little brown shack, with a brown thrush nesting in the porch. She guards her mining claim, and works on foot the little bunch of cattle that has supplied her livelihood for years. The graves of her husband and son are on the lonely hillside behind her cabin. It was long ago that she saw her son fall from his horse, shot dead by an unseen enemy, but neither sorrow, loneliness or the passing years have daunted that valiant spirit or driven her from her stronghold.

And then there is Dr. Adamson, notable surgeon, and Mrs. Adamson, raising fine saddle horses on their ranch, and the Morrows over at Hilltop, one keeping bees, and the other seeing that we natives keep the game laws. Not to mention those of us who manage the several guest ranches for adults and the one for juveniles, and of course the many whose ranches are the honest-to-goodness cattle kind.

Mr. Barton speculates as to whether he wouldn't have had a lot more entertainment out of life if fate had set him down to storekeep in our canyon instead of the Middle West. He doubts if he would be as versatile as our merchants, Mr. Newman and Mr. Faucett, but he'd like to be. They supply us a box of crackers or a reel of barb wire, tinker our cars, lend us anything from a cow to a gasoline engine, get through the most extraordinary amount of work, never seem hurried, and have a dry western-flav ored yarn for every occasion.

Mr. Barton hasn't yet discovered that he has become one of our colorful characters. We and the Chiricahuas have made him our own, and he in turn has shared with us his gifts of imagination and appreciation. He has become another bit of design in the pattern of space and color, past and present that shapes our lives here on the sunrise of the mountains. His cheerful spirit, forever attended by children, and the ghosts of a stirring past, will, we believe, somehow benevolently haunt our peaks and canyons long after his plump person, so much in the flesh, is no longer with us.

From explaining items of the white man's law to gathering materials used in treating the sick. When one of the tribal medicine men is called in to give a "sing" for an ailing Navajo, sand paintings are often made, and the sand must be obtained from specific places, often many miles apart. Getting this sand by the primitive methods of travel of the Navajo (afoot or horseback) is a tedious task and Davey, with his automobile, is an object of envy and his services enlisted whenever possible. On the occasion of one sing, the patient was a Navajo woman afflicted with trachoma, a serious and contagious disease of the eyes. Davey, hoping to gain Clyde's cooperation in case any of the Peshlakai family should contract the malady, explained to the Indian that white doctors had discovered a very powerful medicine that would cure the patient if the trouble could be treated in its early stages. After elaborating on this fact, Davey asked Clyde if he thought that the Navajo medicine men with their sings and sand paintings ever effected a cure. "Oh," answered Clyde nonchalantly, "sometimes do, sometimes don'tjust like white doctor."

Although unable to speak English, Clyde's wife, Sally, is a frequent visitor at the ruin where she spends many hours "visiting" with Corky. By the use of signs, the two women make themselves understood, and Corky with the few Navajo words which she has picked up and what English Sally can understand, is able to convey her meaning. Sally owns about 150 sheep, the mutton from which forms the basis of the Peshlakai family's food supply. The children are the herdsmen while Sally and her sister manage the flock and do the shearing. Much of the wool is traded for staple groceries and other simple essentials, but Sally keeps the best for weaving. She herself dyes and spins the yarn with which she makes the beautiful rugs characteristic of her tribe. Corky became much interested in this art, and asked Sally to teach her. During the summer of 1939, under the supervision of the Navajo woman, Corky dyed and spun wool and wove a small rug. Although inferior to the product of the experienced Sally, the rug is an object of considerable pride in the Jones household.

With the paving of Highway U. S. 89, which passes within 15 miles of Wupatki, and the increasing number of visitors coming to the ruin, the National Park Service decided that it was time to provide its representative at Wupatki with more comfortable quarters. Consequently, in 1939, work was started on a commodious house, out of sight of the ruin, and with plumbing connected with the Wupatki spring. As the walls of the house began to rise, Clyde Peshlakai, the Navajo, decided that it was up to his family to "keep up with the Joneses," and he thereupon began collecting old boards, sheets of galvanized iron, and other materials with which he constructed a peculiar edifice resembling some of the structures seen in the shantytown districts of large American cities. When this was completed, Clyde abandoned his native hogan and moved his family into the new creation, long before the roof was started on the ranger's quarters. The Joneses were much disturbed by this activity on the part of their neighbors, and Davey remonstrated with Clyde, pointing out that visitors to the monument wanted to see Indians living in their native houses, and not in imitations of white men's shacks. Furthermore, Davey warned, landscaping officials of the National Park Service would not permit such an unsightly building on the monument. After this was carefully explained, and the cozy comforts of the native hogan fully extolled, Clyde seemed impressed.

Their house, modern and comfortable, will make life much easier for them. They realize it will not have the zest and the romance of their old home in the ruin. It is with a pang of regret that they will vacate forever the oldest inhabited house in the United States.

"ARIZONA"

The Wild Old West Lives Again In Columbia's Great Screen Classic

(Continued from Page 9)

Bringing extras from Hollywood to his giant location. Realizing that half the world was familiar with the faces of the screen capital's types, Ruggles decided to hire his extras from the territory surrounding Tucson. Which was a real break for some hundreds of cowboys. They're the chaps who will be seen doing the daring riding and expert herding in the picture. Objects of interest in Old Tucson include the old Mission San Augustin, with broken walls testifying to the pioneers' filching of adobe bricks for their own residences. There is the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, with half a dozen Mexicans praying when not working in scenes. There is the stage depot and the postoffice.

Not least of the interesting sights on the set was Solomon Warner's store stocked with barrels of floor and sugar; soap made from the pulpy root of the yucca plant; all kinds of meat; square nails; tin-ware; boots and shoes piled in confusion; kitchen ranges of ancient vintage; bolts of drygoods; ready to wear overalls and shirts; in fact everything that the pioneer might need and nothing that he could do without.

Of quaint Arizona characters utilized by Ruggles in bringing Kelland's story to the screen, none is more colorful than Mike Cruse, who has been wandering around the streets of Tucson for many years, playing plaintive strains on his violin. Ruggles made him the barber in the picture.

In the arsenal which Columbia created at Old Tucson, every type of old gun in existence was carefully stored. Some of the firearms were priceless, others were more common, all of them were collectors' items. During the filming, it was discovered that the ammunition was not supplying enough smoke for the camera to capture. Whereupon the men in charge of the gun room changed the powder in 10,000 rounds of ammunition.

The town built on the desert is a part of Arizona's history. The picture filmed in that town will be witnessed by millions of people all over the world. The history of Arizona, which had its inception in the scarred old town, will be made familiar to millions of children. Ruggles, whose first great picture was "Cimarron," is determined to have an equally sensational and entertaining production in "Arizona."

The Fine Arts in Arizona.

"Sketching in Arizona is a rather ticklish pursuit. I never before traveled through a country in which I was compelled to pursue the fine arts with a revolver strapped around my body, and a double-barreled shot-gun lying across my knees."

J. Ross Browne's Adventures in the Apache Country

A glowing account is given of the Pima, Papago and Maricopa Indians in contrast to the savagery of the Apache. "As far back as the records extend these people lived as they do to this day, by cultivating the earth and always manifesting a friendly disposition toward the whites." With a total estimated population of six thousand industrious tribesmen, great surpluses of wheat were raised as well as large quantities of beans, pumpkins, squashes and melons, in the 1850's. Summing up he writes, "It thus will be seen that the Pimos are not a race to be despised. They have always proved themselves good warriors, and have been uniformly successful in resisting the incursions of the Apaches. Their villages have afforded the only protection ever given tofinally reaching aid. Later it was learned the younger of the captive sisters had died from mistreatment and the other, after a time, was discovered in the hands of Mohave Indians, from whom her release was purchased.

32 American citizens in Arizona. If it were not for the Pimos and Maricopas it would now be impossible to travel from Fort Yuma to Tucson." A visit was made to Casa Grande, now a national monument near Coolidge, where"The remains of three large edifices are distinctly visible, one of which is in a remarkable state of preservation. This grand old relic of an age and people of which we have no other than traditionary accounts looms up over the desert in bold relief as the traveler approaches filling the mind with a strange perplexity as to the past." Browne relates that contrary to the statements contained in Bartlett's historical accounts, he "saw no hieroglyphics in the building except the names of some Texan adventurers and California Volunteers, scribbled with a piece of charcoal. Rude sketches of Jeff Davis hung by the neck and President Lincoln fleeing from the vengeance of the Chivalry indicated rather forcibly that we are not beyond the reach of sectional prejudices. One name was especially worthy of note that of Paul Weaver, 1833, a famous trapper and pioneer, whose history is closely identified with that of Arizona."

Commenting whimsically upon the hazards entertained by himself as an artist in attempting to put down, with peace of mind, the many interesting sights before his eyes while traveling through Arizona, one of Browne's most potent delineations covers this particular phase of his activities. "Sketching in Arizona is rather a ticklish pursuit. I shall not readily forget my experiences of the cañons and thickets, and the queer feeling produced by the slightest sound that fell upon my ears as I hurriedly committed outlines to paper . I never before traveled through a country in which I was compelled to pursue the fine arts with a revolver strapped around my body, a double-barreled shot-gun lying across my knees, and a half dozen soldiers armed with Sharpe's carbines keeping guard in the distance. Even with all the safeguards of pistols and soldiers I am free to admit that on occasions of this kind I frequently looked behind to see how the country appeared in its rear aspect. An artist with an arrow in his back may be a very picturesque object to contemplate at one's leisure; but I would rather draw him on paper than sit for the portrait myself."

Browne next wields his satiric pen in portraying the Old Pueblo of Tucson. "It was reserved for the city of Tucson to prove that the world is not yet exhausted of its wonders a city of mud boxes, dingy and dilapidated, cracked and baked into a composite of dust and filth; littered about with broken corrals, sheds, bake-ovens, carcarcasses of dead animals, and broken pottery; barren of verdure, parched, naked, and grimly desolate in the glare of the southern sun. Adobe walls without whitewash inside or out, hard earth floors, baked and dried Mexicans, sore-backed burros, coyote dogs, and terra-cotta children; soldiers, teamsters, and honest miners lounging about the mescal shops, soaked with the fiery poison; a noisy band of Sonoraian buffoons..

He says Tucson was "quite a place of resort for traders, speculators, gamblers, horse-thieves, murderers, and vagrant politicians. Men who were no longer permitted to live in California found the climate of Tucson congenial to their health. If the world were searched over I suppose there could not be found so degraded a set of villains as then formed the principal society of Tucson. Every man went armed to the teeth, and street-fights and bloody affrays were a daily occurance I must be permitted to say the best view of Tucson is the rear view on the road to Fort Yuma."

Following the complete airing of Tucson, Browne changes his tone of thought to the appreciation of the famous mission San Xavier del Bac, nine miles to the south of Tucson, which he says is one of the most beautiful and picturesque edifices of the kind to be found on the North American continent. He was most surprised, as one would be, to find such a splendid monument of civilization in the wilds of Arizona. A general description of the appearance of the mission building is given as well as his impressions of the Papago Indians, their background and culture.

Leaving San Xavier and traveling south, Browne reveals, "I saw on the road between San Xavier and Tubac, a distance of forty miles, many graves of the white men murdered by the Apaches. Literally the roadside was marked with the burial places of these unfortunate settlers. There is not now a single soul living to enliven the solitude. All is silent and death-like; yet strangely calm and beautiful in its desolation."

Arriving at Tubac they found that their party were the only inhabitants. The old Plaza of the pueblo was knee-deep in weeds. The adobe houses with fallen roofs and crumbling walls were a sad contrast to the once "most important Arizona town," the Presidio of Tubac. Three miles below Tubac the old mission of San José de Tumacacori, now a national monument, was visited and a description of the ruins and the environs is given in detail.

As Browne's party proceeded south toward Nogales and the Mexican border, "Each mile," he remarked, "improved in beauty and fertility. Grass up to our horses' shoulders covered the valley, and the hills were clothed with luxurious groves of oak."

Touching upon the sad neglect, or perhaps lack of foresight, determination and insistence in not securing from Mexico at the time of the Gadsden Purchase, a port on the Gulf of California, Browne narrates, " could not help regretting, as I looked beyond the boundary of our territorial possessions, that we had not secured, by purchase or negotiaus a port on the Gulf of California." He tells of the advantages of the importance of the acquisition of this added territory and urged the government to exert every effort to obtain this port ere it was too late. Arizona had passed up her great and only chance to obtain a port on the gulf and regrets even more as time goes on, the lack of foresight in this, one of the great diplomatic blunders of our history.

Summing up his impressions of Arizona he reiterates that in his belief the territory was wonderfully rich in minerals and that immigration would have to be encouraged by added military protection; capital would have to expended without hope of any great profits or immediate return of investments. He also states that in his opinion civil law must be established on a firm basis and that facilities of communication should and must be fostered by legislation of Congress.

"With millions of acres of the finest arable lands, there was not at the time of our visit a single farm under cultivation in the Territory; with the richest gold and silver mines, paper-money is the common currency; with forts innumerable, there is scarcely any protection to life and property; with extensive pastures, there is little or no stock; with rivers through every valley, a stranger may die of thirst. In January one enjoys the luxury of a bath as under a tropical sun, and sleeps under double blankets at night. There are towns without inhabitants, and deserts extensively populated; vegetation where there is no soil, and soil where there is no vegetation. Snow is seen where it is never seen to fall, and ice forms where it never snows."

"There are Indians the most docile in North America, yet travelers are murdered daily by Indians the most barbarous on earth. Mines without miners and forts without soldiers are common. Politicians without policy, traders without trade, storekeepers without stores, teamsters without teams, and all without means form the mass of the white population. But here let me end, for I find myself verging on the proverbs."

This was the Arizona of J. Ross Browne's days the southern Arizona that is so different today. Comparing Browne's picture of early-day Arizona with that of the magnificent state of today is a very fascinating transition. He told his story and made his pictures as he saw and felt. He formed his opinions, right or wrong, exaggerated or subdued. His remarks are nevertheless interesting and intriguing and his volume, "Adventures in the Apache Country" is without doubt a valuable contribution one of the few outstanding volumes revealing the hectic era of Arizona's dramatic past.