PRIN. WM. I. MARSHALL, Lawndale School.
The Colorado River is pre-eminently "The River of Cañons." Formed in
eastern Utah by the junction of the Green River, rising in northwest
Wyoming, and the Grand, which has its sources in the mountain rim which
walls in the Middle Park of the State of Colorado, not a mile of the
Colorado River is in the state of Colorado.
About two-fifths of its nearly 2,000 miles, reckoning from the sources
of the Green, which is the main stream, flows through cañons, the
series culminating in magnitude and grandeur in the Grand Cañon of
the Colorado in Arizona. In 1875, the Government Printing Office
at Washington printed in a finely illustrated quarto volume of 291
pages, under the modest and unpretentious title of "Exploration of the
Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries, Explored in 1869, 1870,
1871, and 1872 Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution," the fascinating and graphic story of one of the most
perilous explorations ever undertaken by man, and one whose origin and
successful outcome were due to the scientific enthusiasm, the great
endurance, the fertility of resources and the dauntless courage of Maj.
J. W. Powell. Few men with two arms would have dared to enter upon, or
could successfully have completed the task, and he had left his good
right arm on a battle-field of our civil war.
In 1882, the United States Geological Survey, of which Maj. Powell was
then director, printed Vol. II of its Monographs, being the "Tertiary
History of the Grand Cañon District, by Capt. C. E. Dutton, U.S.A.," a
sumptuous quarto of 264 pages, with maps and splendid illustrations.
These two books are, and must ever remain the great authorities on "The
River of Cañons," and I shall only write briefly of the route to and
scenic splendors of the Grand Cañon.
It is accessible from various points along the Santa Fe Railway, but
most easily at present by a stage ride of seventy-three miles, at
an elevation above the sea varying from 6,866 to nearly 9,000 feet,
from Flagstaff, Arizona--a beautifully situated mountain town at
the southern base of the San Francisco Peaks, a cluster of volcanic
mountains, the loftiest of which rises nearly 13,000 feet above the
sea, and some 6,000 feet above Flagstaff.
At Flagstaff is the famous Lowell Astronomical Observatory, and about
it are many points of much interest, especially Walnut Creek Cañon,
with its extensive ruins of the cliff dwellers' houses built midway up
the face of the almost vertical cliffs.
The first and last thirds of the stage ride to the Cañon are through
the great Conconino Forest of long leaved pines--much scattered and
with no underbrush--but commonly with splendid grass and unnumbered
wild flowers covering all the open spaces between them.
The middle third is over a more desert region, but not destitute of
grass, and with stunted pines and cedars growing on most of the ridges
and hills along the way.
For the past two years there has been little rain and the route last
July was much more dusty than when I went over it first in 1895, and
deemed it one of the most enjoyable stage rides I had ever taken; but
rains late in July made it much pleasanter when I returned in August,
this year, for a third visit.
Along the whole seventy-three miles there is no lake, pond, river,
creek, brook, rivulet, or rill, no running water except springs at two
points many miles apart which have been piped into troughs for stock.
This absence of water over so wide an expanse seems at first wholly
incompatible with the splendid forests of stately pines, with some
aspens and scrubby oaks interspersed, and the luxuriant grass and
innumerable flowers.
They are kept alive by the moisture of the heavy snows of winter,
and the coolness of the nights in the warmer months, checking the
evaporation, and by occasional rains in summer, mostly in July and
August.
We are promised a branch railroad in the near future from the main line
of the Santa Fe to the Cañon.
All previous observations of cañons fail utterly to give any adequate
ideas of the immensity and the splendor of this, "the sublimest
spectacle on earth." No narrow crack in the earth's crust is this
cañon, but a vast chasm 217 miles long, from five to twelve miles
wide and from 5,000 to 6,000 feet deep, with a great river rolling
tumultuously along its bottom, miles away from us as the crow flies,
and nearly a mile below us vertically.
As there are very few places where it is possible to climb down to the
river, one might perish from thirst while wandering along the brink of
this cañon, and having in plain view at many points one of the greatest
rivers of the west coast of America.
It is the only cañon on earth vast enough to have scores of mountains
within it.
It is a double cañon, _i. e._ a cañon within a cañon.
The outer cañon is from 2,000 to 3,000 feet deep, and from five to
twelve miles wide.
Its general direction is east and west, but the mighty river, which in
ancient geologic ages eroded this vast abyss, curved, like all rivers,
now this way and now that, so that each wall is recessed in mighty
amphitheaters, between which comparatively narrow promontories or
points run out from one to six miles into the cañon.
From the base of the mighty palisade which forms the walls of the outer
cañon stretches a plateau 5, 8, 10, or 12 miles wide, to the equally
lofty palisade which forms the opposite wall of the outer cañon, and
somewhere near the middle of this plateau is sunk the inner cañon,
another 2,000 to 3,000 feet deep, with a width at the top varying from
one-half to three-fourths of a mile, and in its somber depths rolls the
ever turbid Colorado, ceaselessly at its endless labor of cutting down
the mountains and sweeping their ruins to the sea.
Scattered all over this plateau are the remains of what were once long
promontories like the points on which we now walk or ride far out
towards the middle of the cañon, but which have weathered so that they
are now lines of hills and mountains.
Real mountains many of them are, for from their bases on the plateau,
2,000 to 3,000 feet above the bottom of the inner cañon, they rise
1,500 to 2,500 feet, nearly or quite to the level of the tops of the
cliffs bounding the outer cañon.
Nearly all the length of the cañon is through sandstones, and
limestones, and shales, resplendent with the colors which add so much
to the beauty of Rocky Mountain scenery.
The almost uniform horizontality of stratification of these rocks
demonstrates that the erosion of the cañon was little aided or affected
by any violent upheavals or disturbances of the rocks.
We see clearly about twenty-five miles each way along the cañon, and
somewhat indistinctly probably another twenty-five or thirty miles each
way, and everywhere is the same indescribable splendor of color and of
beauty of form.
It is a new "Holy City," and whether viewed from above, by a ride or
walk along the edge of the cañon, or from the multitudinous turns and
loops of the trail by which one can descend on horseback to the plateau
and ride across to the edge of the inner cañon, whence a path enables
us to safely climb on foot down to the river's edge, everywhere we seem
to be gazing on the ruins of cities, palaces, towers, and temples, such
as might have been builded by the gnomes and genii of the "Arabian
Nights."
Speaking of these weather-sculptured buttes or mountains of bare and
splendidly colored rock which stand within the outer cañon, Dutton
says:
"Some of these are gorgeous pagodas, sculptured in the usual fashion,
and ending in sharp finials at the summit. Others are the cloister
buttes with wing-walls and gables, panels and alcoves. All are quarried
out upon a superlative scale of magnitude, and every one of them is a
marvel. The great number and intricacy of these objects confuse the
senses and do not permit the eye to rest. The mind wanders incessantly
from one to another and cannot master the multitude of things crowded
at once upon its attention. There are scores of these structures, any
one of which, if it could be placed by itself upon some distant plain,
would be regarded as one of the great wonders of the world," and of the
colors he says:
"The color-effects are rich and wonderful. They are due to the inherent
colors of the rocks, modified by the atmosphere. Like any other great
series of strata in the Plateau Province, the carboniferous has its
own range of characteristic colors, which might serve to distinguish
it even if we had no other criterion. The summit strata are pale-gray,
with a faint yellowish cast. Beneath them the cross-bedded sandstone
appears, showing a mottled surface of pale-pinkish hue. Underneath
this member are nearly 1,000 feet of the Lower Aubrey sandstones,
displaying an intensely brilliant red, which is somewhat masked by
the talus shot down from the gray, cherty limestones at the summit.
Beneath the Lower Aubrey is the face of the Red Wall limestone, from
2,000 to 3,000 feet high. It has a strong red tone, but a very peculiar
one. Most of the red strata of the west have the brownish or vermilion
tones, but these are rather purplish-red, as if the pigment had been
treated to a dash of blue. It is not quite certain that this may not
arise in part from the intervention of the blue haze, and probably it
is rendered more conspicuous by this cause; but, on the whole, the
purplish cast seems to be inherent. This is the dominant color-mass of
the cañon, for the expanse of rock surface displayed is more than half
in the Red Wall group. It is less brilliant than the fiery-red of the
Aubrey sandstones, but is still quite strong and rich. Beneath are the
deep-browns of the lower carboniferous.
"The dark iron-black of the horn-blendic schists revealed in the lower
gorge makes but little impression upon the boundless expanse of bright
colors above."
[Illustration: OIL WELL.
CHICAGO:
A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER.]