O, pallid spectre of the midnight skies!
Whose phantom features in the dome of Night
Elude the keenest gaze of wistful eyes
Till amplest lenses aid the failing sight,
On heaven's blue sea the farthest isle of fire.
From thee, whose glories it would fain admire,
Must vision, baffled, in despair retire!
What art thou, ghostly visitant of flame?
Wouldst thou 'neath closer scrutiny dissolve
In myriad suns that constellations frame,
Round which life-freighted satellites revolve,
Like those unnumbered orbs which nightly creep
In dim procession o'er the azure steep,
As white-wing'd caravans the desert sweep?
Or, art thou still an incandescent mass,
Acquiring form as hostile forces urge,
Through whose vast length a million lightnings pass
As to and fro its fiery billows surge,
Whose glowing atoms, whirled in ceaseless strife
Where now chaotic anarchy is rife.
Shall yet become the fair abodes of life?
We know not; for the faint, exhausted rays
Which hither on Light's wingèd coursers come
From fires which ages since first lit their blaze,
One instant gleam, then perish, spent and dumb!
How strange the thought that, whatsoe'er we learn,
Our tiny globe no answer can return,
Since with but dull, reflected beams we burn!
Yet this we know; yon ring of spectral light,
Whose distance thrills the soul with solemn awe,
Can ne'er escape in its majestic might
The firm control of omnipresent law.
This mote descending to its bounden place.
Those suns whose radiance we can scarcely trace,
Alike obey the Power pervading space.
[Illustration: NIGHT.]
[Illustration: THE SAN FRANCISCO VOLCANOES.]
[Illustration: STARTING FOR THE GRAND CAÑON.]
One glorious September morning, leaving our train at Flagstaff, we
started in stage-coaches for a drive of sixty-five miles to the Grand
Cañon. I had looked forward to this drive with some misgiving,
dreading the heat of the sun, and the dust and sand which I had
supposed we should encounter; but to my astonishment and delight it
was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. It was only eleven hours in
duration, and not only was most of the route level, but two-thirds of
it lay through a section of beautifully rolling land, diversified
with open glades and thousands upon thousands of tall pines and
cedars entirely free from undergrowth. It is no exaggeration to say
that we drove that day for miles at a time over a road carpeted with
pine needles. The truth is, Arizona, though usually considered a
treeless and rainless country, possesses some remarkable exceptions;
and the region near Flagstaff not only abounds in stately pines, but
is at certain seasons visited by rainstorms which keep it fresh and
beautiful. During our stay at the Grand Cañon we had a shower every
night; the atmosphere was marvelously pure, and aromatic with the
odors of a million pines; and so exhilarating was exercise in the
open air, that however arduous it might be, we never felt
inconvenienced by fatigue, and mere existence gave us joy. Decidedly,
then, it will not do to condemn the whole of Arizona because of the
heat of its arid, southern plains; for the northern portion of the
state is a plateau, with an elevation of from five thousand to seven
thousand feet. Hence, as it is not latitude, so much as altitude,
that gives us healthful, pleasing temperature, in parts of Arizona
the climate is delightful during the entire year.
[Illustration: THE DRIVE THROUGH THE PINES.]
[Illustration: THE SAN FRANCISCO MOUNTAIN.]
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 Cañon, 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 Cañon. 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 Cañon. 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
there; but, until a hotel is built, the principal dormitories must be
the tents, which are provided with wooden floors and furnished with
tables, chairs, and comfortable beds. This kind of accommodation,
however, although excellent for travelers in robust health, is not
sufficiently luxurious to attract many tourists. The evident
necessity of the place is a commodious, well-kept inn, situated a few
hundred feet to the rear of Hance's Camp, on the very edge of the
Cañon. If such a hotel, built on a spot commanding the incomparable
view, were properly advertised and well-managed, I firmly believe
that thousands of people would come here every year, on their way to
or from the Pacific coast--not wishing or expecting it to be a place
of fashion, but seeking it as a point where, close beside a park of
pines, seven thousand feet above the level of the sea, one of the
greatest marvels of the world can be enjoyed, in all the different
phases it presents at morning, noon, and night, in sunshine,
moonlight, and in storm.
[Illustration: OLD HANCE.]
[Illustration: THE FIRST VIEW.]
Early the next morning I eagerly climbed the little knoll at the foot
of which our tents were located, for I well knew that from its summit
I should see the Cañon. Many grand objects in the world are heralded
by sound: the solemn music of Niagara, the roar of active geysers in
the Yellowstone, the intermittent thunder of the sea upon a rocky
coast, are all distinguishable at some distance; but over the Grand
Cañon of the Colorado broods a solemn silence. No warning voice
proclaims its close proximity; no partial view prepares us for its
awful presence. We walk a few steps through the pine trees from the
camp and suddenly find ourselves upon the Cañon's edge. Just before
reaching it, I halted for a moment, as has always been my wont when
approaching for the first time any natural or historic object that I
have longed for years to look upon. Around me rose the stately pines;
behind me was a simple stretch of rolling woodland; nothing betrayed
the nearness of one of the greatest wonders of the world. Could it
be possible that I was to be disappointed? At last I hurried
through the intervening space, gave a quick look, and almost reeled.
The globe itself seemed to have suddenly yawned asunder, leaving me
trembling on the hither brink of two dissevered hemispheres. Vast as
the bed of a vanished ocean, deep as Mount Washington, riven from its
apex to its base, the grandest cañon on our planet lay glittering
below me in the sunlight like a submerged continent, drowned by an
ocean that had ebbed away. At my very feet, so near that I could have
leaped at once into eternity, the earth was cleft to a depth of six
thousand six hundred feet--not by a narrow gorge, like other cañons,
but by an awful gulf within whose cavernous immensity the forests of
the Adirondacks would appear like jackstraws, the Hudson Palisades
would be an insignificant stratum, Niagara would be indiscernible,
and cities could be tossed like pebbles.
[Illustration: THE EARTH-GULF OF ARIZONA.]
[Illustration: A PORTION OF THE GULF.]
[Illustration: "A VAST, INCOMPARABLE VOID."]
As brain grew steadier and vision clearer, I saw, directly opposite,
the other side of the Cañon thirteen miles away. It was a mountain
wall, a mile in height, extending to the right and left as far as the
eye could reach; and since the cliff upon which I was standing was
its counterpart, it seemed to me as if these parallel banks were once
the shore-lines of a vanished sea. Between them lay a vast,
incomparable void, two hundred miles in length, presenting an
unbroken panorama to the east and west until the gaze could follow it
no farther. Try to conceive what these dimensions mean by realizing
that a strip of the State of Massachusetts, thirteen miles in width,
and reaching from Boston to Albany, could be laid as a covering over
this Cañon, from one end to the other; and that if the entire range
of the White Mountains were flung into it, the monstrous pit would
still remain comparatively empty! Even now it is by no means without
contents; for, as I gazed with awe and wonder into its colossal area,
I seemed to be looking down upon a colored relief-map of the mountain
systems of the continent. It is not strictly one cañon, but a
labyrinth of cañons, in many of which the whole Yosemite could be
packed away and lost. Thus one of them, the Marble Cañon, is of
itself more than three thousand feet deep and sixty-six miles long.
In every direction I beheld below me a tangled skein of mountain
ranges, thousands of feet in height, which the Grand Cañon's walls
enclosed, as if it were a huge sarcophagus, holding the skeleton of
an infant world. It is evident, therefore, that all the other cañons
of our globe are, in comparison with this, what pygmies are to a
giant, and that the name Grand Cañon, which is often used to
designate some relatively insignificant ravine, should be in truth
applied only to the stupendous earth-gulf of Arizona.
[Illustration: A SECTION OF THE LABYRINTH.]
[Illustration: MOUNT AYER.]
At length, I began to try to separate and identify some of these
formations. Directly in the foreground, a savage looking mountain
reared its splintered head from the abyss, and stood defiantly
confronting me, six thousand feet above the Cañon's floor. Though
practically inaccessible to the average tourist, this has been
climbed, and is named Mount Ayer, after Mrs. Edward Ayer, the first
woman who ever descended into the Cañon to the river's edge. Beyond
this, other mountains rise from the gulf, many of which resemble the
Step Pyramid at Sakhara, one of the oldest of the royal sepulchres
beside the Nile. But so immeasurably vaster are the pyramids of this
Cañon than any work of man, that had the tombs of the Pharaohs been
placed beside them, I could not have discovered them without a
field-glass. Some of these grand constructions stand alone, while
others are in pairs; and many of them resemble Oriental temples,
buttressed with terraces a mile or two in length, and approached by
steps a hundred feet in height. Around these, too, are many smaller
mountainous formations, crude and unfinished in appearance, like
shrines commenced and then abandoned by the Cañon's Architect. Most
of us are but children of a larger growth, and love to interpret
Nature, as if she reared her mountains, painted her sunsets, cut her
cañons, and poured forth her cataracts solely for our instruction and
enjoyment. So, when we gaze on forms like these, shaped like gigantic
temples, obelisks, and altars fashioned by man's hands, we try to see
behind them something personal, and even name them after Hindu,
Grecian, and Egyptian gods, as if those deities made them their
abodes. Thus, one of these shrines was called by the artist, Thomas
Moran, the Temple of Set; three others are dedicated respectively to
Siva, Vishnu, and Vulcan; while on the apex of a mighty altar, still
unnamed, a twisted rock-formation, several hundred feet in height,
suggests a flame, eternally preserved by unseen hands, ascending to
an unknown god.
[Illustration: SOME OF THE CAÑON TEMPLES.]
[Illustration: SIVA'S TEMPLE.]
It is difficult to realize the magnitude of these objects, so
deceptive are distances and dimensions in the transparent atmosphere
of Arizona. Siva's Temple, for example, stands upon a platform four
or five miles square, from which rise domes and pinnacles a thousand
feet in height. Some of their summits call to mind immense sarcophagi
of jasper or of porphyry, as if they were the burial-places of dead
deities, and the Grand Cañon a Necropolis for pagan gods. Yet, though
the greater part of the population of the world could be assembled
here, one sees no worshipers, save an occasional devotee of Nature,
standing on the Cañon's rim, lost in astonishment and hushed in awe.
These temples were, however, never intended for a human priesthood. A
man beside them is a pygmy. His voice here would be little more
effective than the chirping of an insect. The God-appointed
celebrant, in the cathedrals of this Cañon, must be Nature. Her voice
alone can rouse the echoes of these mountains into deafening peals of
thunder. Her metaphors are drawn from an experience of ages. Her
prayers are silent, rapturous communings with the Infinite. Her hymns
of praise are the glad songs of birds; her requiems are the meanings
of the pines; her symphonies the solemn roaring of the winds.
"Sermons in stone" abound at every turn; and if, as the poet has
affirmed, "An undevout astronomer is mad," with still more truth can
it be said that those are blind who in this wonderful environment
look not "through Nature up to Nature's God." These wrecks of Tempest
and of Time are finger-posts that point the thoughts of mortals to
eternal heights; and we find cause for hope in the fact that, even in
a place like this, Man is superior to Nature; for he interprets it,
he finds in it the thoughts of God, and reads them after Him.
[Illustration: NEAR THE TEMPLE OF SET.]
[Illustration: HANCE'S TRAIL, LOOKING UP.]
The coloring of the Grand Cañon is no less extraordinary than its
forms. Nature has saved this chasm from being a terrific scene of
desolation by glorifying all that it contains. Wall after wall,
turret after turret, and mountain range after mountain range belted
with tinted strata, succeed one another here like billows petrified
in glowing colors. These hues are not as brilliant and astonishing in
their variety as are the colors of the Yellowstone Cañon, but their
subdued and sombre tones are perfectly suited to the awe-inspiring
place which they adorn. The prominent tints are yellow, red, maroon,
and a dull purple, as if the glory of unnumbered sunsets, fading from
these rugged cliffs, had been in part imprisoned here. Yet, somehow,
specimens of these colored rocks lose all their brilliancy and beauty
when removed from their environment, like sea-shells from the beach;
a verification of the sentiment so beautifully expressed in the lines
of Emerson:
"I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore,
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar."
[Illustration: MIST IN THE CAÑON.]
To stand upon the edge of this stupendous gorge, as it receives its
earliest greeting from the god of day, is to enjoy in a moment
compensation for long years of ordinary uneventful life. When I
beheld the scene, a little before daybreak, a lake of soft, white
clouds was floating round the summits of the Cañon mountains, hiding
the huge crevasse beneath, as a light coverlet of snow conceals a
chasm in an Alpine glacier. I looked with awe upon this misty curtain
of the morn, for it appeared to me symbolic of the grander curtain of
the past which shuts out from our view the awful struggles of the
elements enacted here when the grand gulf was being formed. At
length, however, as the light increased, this thin, diaphanous
covering was mysteriously withdrawn, and when the sun's disk rose
above the horizon, the huge facades of the temples which looked
eastward grew immediately rosy with the dawn; westward, projecting
cliffs sketched on the opposite sides of the ravines, in dark blue
silhouettes, the evanescent forms of castles, battlements, and
turrets from which some shreds of white mist waved like banners of
capitulation; stupendous moats beneath them were still black with
shadow; while clouds filled many of the minor cañons, like vapors
rising from enormous cauldrons. Gradually, as the solar couriers
forced a passage into the narrow gullies, and drove the remnant of
night's army from its hiding-places, innumerable shades of purple,
yellow, red, and brown appeared, varying according to the composition
of the mountains, and the enormous void was gradually filled to the
brim with a luminous haze, which one could fancy was the smoke of
incense from its countless altars. A similar, and even more
impressive, scene is visible here in the late afternoon, when all
the western battlements in their turn grow resplendent, while the
eastern walls submit to an eclipse; till, finally, a gray pall drops
upon the lingering bloom of day, the pageant fades, the huge
sarcophagi are mantled in their shrouds, the gorgeous colors which
have blazed so sumptuously through the day grow pale and vanish, the
altar fires turn to ashes, the mighty temples draw their veils and
seem deserted by both gods and men, and the stupendous panorama
awaits, beneath the canopy of night, the glory of another dawn.
[Illustration: A STUPENDOUS PANORAMA.]
[Illustration: A TANGLED SKEIN OF CAÑONS.]
It was my memorable privilege to see, one afternoon, a thunder storm
below me here. A monstrous cloud-wall, like a huge gray veil, came
traveling up the Cañon, and we could watch the lightning strike the
buttes and domes ten or twelve miles away, while the loud peals of
thunder, broken by crags and multiplied by echoes, rolled toward us
through the darkening gulf at steadily decreasing intervals.
Sometimes two flashes at a time ran quivering through the air and
launched their bolts upon the mountain shrines, as though their
altars, having been erected for idolatrous worship, were doomed to be
annihilated. Occasionally, through an opening in the clouds, the sun
would suddenly light up the summit of a mountain, or flash a path of
gold through a ravine; and I shall never forget the curious sensation
of seeing far beneath me bright sunshine in one cañon and a violent
storm in another. At last, a rainbow cast its radiant bridge across
the entire space, and we beheld the tempest disappear like a troop of
cavalry in a cloud of dust beneath that iridescent arch, beyond whose
curving spectrum all the temples stood forth, still intact in their
sublimity.
[Illustration: ON THE BRINK.]
At certain points along the Cañon, promontories jut out into the
abyss, like headlands which in former times projected into an ocean
that has disappeared. Hence, riding along the brink, as one may do
for miles, we looked repeatedly into many lateral fissures, from
fifteen hundred to three thousand feet in depth. All these, however,
like gigantic fingers, pointed downward to the centre of the Cañon,
where, five miles away, and at a level more than six thousand feet
below the brink on which we stood, extended a long, glittering trail.
This, where the sunlight struck it, gleamed like an outstretched band
of gold. It was the sinuous Colorado, yellow as the Tiber.
[Illustration: RIPLEY'S BUTTE.]
[Illustration: A BIT OF THE RIVER.]
[Illustration: ON HANCE'S TRAIL.]
One day of our stay here was devoted to making the descent to this
river. It is an undertaking compared with which the crossing of the
Gemmi on a mule is child's play. Fortunately, however, the arduous
trip is not absolutely necessary for an appreciation of the immensity
and grandeur of the scenery. On the contrary, one gains a really
better idea of these by riding along the brink, and looking down at
various points on the sublime expanse. Nevertheless, a descent into
the Cañon is essential for a proper estimate of its details, and one
can never realize the enormity of certain cliffs and the extent of
certain valleys, till he has crawled like a maimed insect at their
base and looked thence upward to the narrowed sky. Yet such an
investigation of the Cañon is, after all, merely like going down from
a balloon into a great city to examine one of its myriad streets,
since any gorge we may select for our descending path is but a tiny
section of a labyrinth. That which is unique and incomparable here
is the view from the brink; and when the promised hotel is built upon
the border of the Cañon, visitors will be content to remain for days
at their windows or on the piazzas, feasting their souls upon a scene
always sublime and sometimes terrible.
[Illustration: A VISION OF SUBLIMITY.]
Nevertheless, desirous of exploring a specimen of these chasms (as we
often select for minute examination a single painting out of an
entire picture gallery) we made the descent to the Colorado by means
of a crooked scratch upon a mountain side, which one might fancy had
been blazed by a zigzag flash of lightning. As it requires four hours
to wriggle down this path, and an equal amount of time to wriggle up,
I spent the greater part of a day on what a comrade humorously styled
the "quarter-deck of a mule." A square, legitimate seat in the
saddle was usually impossible, so steep was the incline; and hence,
when going down, I braced my feet and lay back on the haunches of the
beast, and, in coming up, had to lean forward and clutch the pommel,
to keep from sliding off, as a human avalanche, on the head of the
next in line. In many places, however, riding was impossible, and we
were compelled to scramble over the rocks on foot. The effect of
hours of this exercise on muscles unaccustomed to such surprises may
be imagined; yet, owing to the wonderfully restorative air of
Arizona, the next day after this, the severest physical exertion I
had ever known, I did not feel the slightest bad result, and was as
fresh as ever. That there is an element of danger in this trip cannot
be doubted. At times the little trail, on which two mules could not
possibly have passed each other, skirts a precipice where the least
misstep would hurl the traveler to destruction; and every turn of
the zigzag path is so sharp that first the head and then the tail of
the mule inevitably projects above the abyss, and wig-wags to the
mule below. Moreover, though not a vestige of a parapet consoles the
dizzy rider, in several places the animal simply puts its feet
together and toboggans down the smooth face of a slanting rock,
bringing up at the bottom with a jerk that makes the tourist see a
large variety of constellations, and even causes his beast to belch
forth an involuntary roar of disenchantment, or else to try to
pulverize his immediate successor. In such a place as this Nature
seems pitiless and cruel; and one is impressed with the reflection
that a million lives might be crushed out in any section of this maze
of gorges and not a feature of it would be changed. There is,
however, a fascination in gambling with danger, when a desirable
prize is to be gained. The stake we risk may be our lives, yet, when
the chances are in our favor, we often love to match excitement
against the possibility of death; and even at the end, when we are
safe, a sigh sometimes escapes us, as when the curtain falls on an
absorbing play.
[Illustration: STARTING DOWN THE TRAIL.]
[Illustration: A YAWNING CHASM.]
[Illustration: OBLIGED TO WALK.]
As we descended, it grew warmer, not only from the greater elevation
of the sun at noon, but from the fact that in this sudden drop of six
thousand feet we had passed through several zones of temperature.
Snow, for example, may be covering the summits of the mountains in
midwinter, while at the bottom of the Cañon are summer warmth and
vernal flowers. When, after two or three hours of continuous descent,
we looked back at our starting-point, it seemed incredible that we
had ever stood upon the pinnacles that towered so far above us, and
were apparently piercing the slowly moving clouds. The effect was
that of looking up from the bottom of a gigantic well. Instinctively
I asked myself if I should ever return to that distant upper world,
and it gave me a memorable realization of my individual
insignificance to stand in such a sunken solitude, and realize that
the fissure I was exploring was only a single loop in a vast network
of ravines, which, if extended in a straight line, would make a
cañon seven hundred miles in length. It was with relief that we
reached, at last, the terminus of the lateral ravine we had been
following and at the very bottom of the Cañon rested on the bank of
the Colorado. The river is a little freer here than elsewhere in its
tortuous course, and for some hundred feet is less compressed by the
grim granite cliffs which, usually, rise in smooth black walls
hundreds of feet in almost vertical height, and for two hundred miles
retain in their embrace the restless, foaming flood that has no other
avenue of escape.
The navigation of this river by Major J.W. Powell, in 1869, was one
of the most daring deeds of exploration ever achieved by man, and the
thrilling story of his journey down the Colorado, for more than a
thousand miles, and through the entire length of the Grand Cañon, is
as exciting as the most sensational romance. Despite the
remonstrances of friends and the warnings of friendly Indians, Major
Powell, with a flotilla of four boats and nine men, started down the
river, on May 24th, from Green River City, in Utah, and, on the 30th
of August, had completed his stupendous task, with the loss of two
boats and four men. Of the latter, one had deserted at an early date
and escaped; but the remaining three, unwilling to brave any longer
the terrors of the unknown Cañon, abandoned the expedition and tried
to return through the desert, but were massacred by Indians. It is
only when one stands beside a portion of this lonely river, and sees
it shooting stealthily and swiftly from a rift in the Titanic cliffs
and disappearing mysteriously between dark gates of granite, that he
realizes what a heroic exploit the first navigation of this river
was; for nothing had been known of its imprisoned course through this
entanglement of chasms, or could be known, save by exploring it in
boats, so difficult of access were, and are, the two or three points
where it is possible for a human being to reach its perpendicular
banks. Accordingly, when the valiant navigators sailed into these
mysterious waters, they knew that there was almost every chance
against the possibility of a boat's living in such a seething
current, which is, at intervals, punctured with a multitude of
tusk-like rocks, tortured into rapids, twisted into whirlpools, or
broken by falls; while in the event of shipwreck they could hope for
little save naked precipices to cling to for support. Moreover, after
a heavy rain the Colorado often rises here fifty or sixty feet under
the veritable cataracts of water which, for miles, stream directly
down the perpendicular walls, and make of it a maddened torrent
wilder than the rapids of Niagara. All honor, then, to Powell and his
comrades who braved not alone the actual dangers thus described, but
stood continually alert for unknown perils, which any bend in the
swift, snake-like river might disclose, and which would make the
gloomy groove through which they slipped a black-walled _oubliette_,
or gate to Acheron.
[Illustration: A CABIN ON THE TRAIL.]
[Illustration: A HALT.]
[Illustration: AT THE BOTTOM.]
[Illustration: TAKING LUNCH NEAR THE RIVER.]
[Illustration: BESIDE THE COLORADO.]
If any river in the world should be regarded with superstitious
reverence, it is the Colorado, for it represents to us, albeit in a
diminished form, the element that has produced the miracle of the
Arizona Cañon,--water. Far back in the distant Eocene Epoch of our
planet's history, the Colorado was the outlet of an inland sea which
drained off toward the Pacific, as the country of northwestern
Arizona rose; and the Grand Cañon illustrates, on a stupendous scale,
the system of erosion which, in a lesser degree, has deeply furrowed
the entire region. At first one likes to think of the excavation of
this awful chasm as the result of some tremendous cataclysm of
Nature; but, in reality, it has all been done by water, assisted, no
doubt, by the subtler action of the winds and storms in the
disintegration of the monster cliffs, which, as they slowly crumbled
into dust, were carried downward by the rains, and, finally, were
borne off by the omnivorous river to the sea.
[Illustration: MONSTER CLIFFS, AND A NOTCH IN THE CAÑON WALL.]
[Illustration: MILES OF INTRA-CAÑONS.]
But though, at first, these agents do not seem as forceful and
extraordinary as a single terrible catastrophe, the slow results thus
gained are even more impressive. For what an appalling lapse of time
must have been necessary to cut down and remove layers of sandstone,
marble, and granite, thousands of feet in thickness; to carve the
mighty shrines of Siva and of Vishnu, and to etch out these scores of
interlacing cañons! To calculate it one must reckon a century for
every turn of the hourglass. It is the story of a struggle maintained
for ages between the solid and the fluid elements, in which at last
the yielding water won a victory over adamant. It is an evidence,
too, of Nature's patient methods; a triumph of the delicate over the
strong, the liquid over the solid, the transitory over the enduring.
At present, the softer material has been exhausted, and the rapacious
river, shrunken in size, must satisfy itself by gnawing only the
archaic granite which still curbs its course. Yet if this
calculation overpowers us, what shall we say of the reflections
awakened by the fact that all the limestone cliffs along the lofty
edges of the Cañon are composed of fossils,--the skeletons of
creatures that once lived here covered by an ocean, and that ten
thousand feet of strata, which formerly towered above the present
summits of the Cañon walls, have been eroded and swept downward to
the sea! Hence, were the missing strata (all of which are found in
regular sequence in the high plateaus of Utah) restored, this Cañon
would be sixteen thousand feet in depth, and from its borders one
could look down upon a mountain higher than Mont Blanc! To calculate
the æons implied in the repeated elevations and subsidences which
made this region what it is would be almost to comprehend eternity.
In such a retrospect centuries crumble and disappear into the gulf of
Time as pebbles into the Cañon of the Colorado.
On my last evening in the pine tree camp I left my tent and walked
alone to the edge of the Grand Cañon. The night was white with the
splendor of the moon. A shimmering lake of silvery vapor rolled its
noiseless tide against the mountains, and laved the terraces of the
Hindu shrines. The lunar radiance, falling into such profundity, was
powerless to reveal the plexus of subordinate cañons, and even the
temples glimmered through the upper air like wraiths of the huge
forms which they reveal by day. Advancing cautiously to an isolated
point upon the brink, I lay upon my face, and peered down into the
spectral void. No voice of man, nor cry of bird, nor roar of beast
resounded through those awful corridors of silence. Even thought had
no existence in that sunken realm of chaos. I felt as if I were the
sole survivor of the deluge. Only the melancholy murmur of the wind
ascended from that sepulchre of centuries. It seemed the requiem for
a vanished world.
[Illustration]