Only by descending into the canyon may one arrive at anything like
comprehension of its proportions, and the descent can not be too
urgently commended to every visitor who is sufficiently robust to bear a
reasonable amount of fatigue. There are four paths down the southern
wall of the canyon in the granite gorge district—Mystic Spring, Bright
Angel, Berry’s and Hance’s trails. The following account of a descent of
the old Hance trail will serve to indicate the nature of such an
experience to-day, except that the trip may now be safely made with
greater comfort.
For the first two miles it is a sort of Jacob’s ladder, zigzagging at an
unrelenting pitch. At the end of two miles a comparatively gentle slope
is reached, known as the blue limestone level, some 2,500 feet below the
rim, that is to say—for such figures have to be impressed objectively
upon the mind—five times the height of St. Peter’s, the Pyramid of
Cheops, or the Strasburg Cathedral; eight times the height of the
Bartholdi Statue of Liberty; eleven times the height of Bunker Hill
Monument. Looking back from this level the huge picturesque towers that
border the rim shrink to pigmies and seem to crown a perpendicular wall,
unattainably far in the sky. Yet less than one-half the descent has been
made.
Overshadowed by sandstone of chocolate hue the way grows gloomy and
foreboding, and the gorge narrows. The traveler stops a moment beneath a
slanting cliff 500 feet high, where there is an Indian grave and pottery
scattered about. A gigantic niche has been worn in the face of this
cavernous cliff, which, in recognition of its fancied Egyptian
character, was named the Temple of Sett by the painter, Thomas Moran.
A little beyond this temple it becomes necessary to abandon the animals.
The river is still a mile and a half distant. The way narrows now to a
mere notch, where two wagons could barely pass, and the granite begins
to tower gloomily overhead, for we have dropped below the sandstone and
have entered the archæan—a frowning black rock, streaked, veined, and
swirled with vivid red and white, smoothed and polished by the rivulet
and beautiful as a mosaic. Obstacles are encountered in the form of
steep, interposing crags, past which the brook has found a way, but over
which the pedestrian must clamber. After these lesser difficulties come
sheer descents, which at present are passed by the aid of ropes.
The last considerable drop is a 40-foot bit by the side of a pretty
cascade, where there are just enough irregularities in the wall to give
toe-hold. The narrowed cleft becomes exceedingly wayward in its course,
turning abruptly to right and left, and working down into twilight
depth. It is very still. At every turn one looks to see the embouchure
upon the river, anticipating the sudden shock of the unintercepted roar
of waters. When at last this is reached, over a final downward clamber,
the traveler stands upon a sandy rift confronted by nearly vertical
walls many hundred feet high, at whose base a black torrent pitches in a
giddying onward slide that gives him momentarily the sensation of
slipping into an abyss.
[Illustration: A Party on Bright Angel Trail.]
With so little labor may one come to the Colorado River in the heart of
its most tremendous channel, and gaze upon a sight that heretofore has
had fewer witnesses than have the wilds of Africa. Dwarfed by such
prodigious mountain shores, which rise immediately from the water at an
angle that would deny footing to a mountain sheep, it is not easy to
estimate confidently the width and volume of the river. Choked by the
stubborn granite at this point, its width is probably between 250 and
300 feet, its velocity fifteen miles an hour, and its volume and turmoil
equal to the Whirlpool Rapids of Niagara. Its rise in time of heavy rain
is rapid and appalling, for the walls shed almost instantly all the
water that falls upon them. Drift is lodged in the crevices thirty feet
overhead.
For only a few hundred yards is the tortuous stream visible, but its
effect upon the senses is perhaps the greater for that reason. Issuing
as from a mountain side, it slides with oily smoothness for a space and
suddenly breaks into violent waves that comb back against the current
and shoot unexpectedly here and there, while the volume sways tide-like
from side to side, and long curling breakers form and hold their outline
lengthwise of the shore, despite the seemingly irresistible velocity of
the water. The river is laden with drift (huge tree trunks), which it
tosses like chips in its terrible play.
Standing upon that shore one can barely credit Powell’s achievement, in
spite of its absolute authenticity. Never was a more magnificent
self-reliance displayed than by the man who not only undertook the
passage of Colorado River but won his way. And after viewing a fraction
of the scene at close range, one can not hold it to the discredit of
three of his companions that they abandoned the undertaking not far
below this point. The fact that those who persisted got through alive is
hardly more astonishing than that any should have had the hardihood to
persist. For it could not have been alone the privation, the infinite
toil, the unending suspense in constant menace of death that assaulted
their courage; these they had looked for; it was rather the unlifted
gloom of those tartarean depths, the unspeakable horrors of an endless
valley of the shadow of death, in which every step was irrevocable.
Returning to the spot where the animals were abandoned, camp is made for
the night. Next morning the way is retraced. Not the most fervid
pictures of a poet’s fancy could transcend the glories then revealed in
the depths of the canyon; inky shadows, pale gildings of lofty spires,
golden splendors of sun beating full on façades of red and yellow,
obscurations of distant peaks by veils of transient shower, glimpses of
white towers half drowned in purple haze, suffusions of rosy light
blended in reflection from a hundred tinted walls. Caught up to exalted
emotional heights the beholder becomes unmindful of fatigue. He mounts
on wings. He drives the chariot of the sun.
[Illustration: Uncaptioned vista]
Having returned to the plateau, it will be found that the descent into
the canyon has bestowed a sense of intimacy that almost amounts to a
mental grasp of the scene. The terrific deeps that part the walls of
hundreds of castles and turrets of mountainous bulk may be approximately
located in barely discernible pen-strokes of detail, and will be
apprehended mainly through the memory of upward looks from the bottom,
while towers and obstructions and yawning fissures that were deemed
events of the trail will be wholly indistinguishable, although they are
known to lie somewhere flat beneath the eye. The comparative
insignificance of what are termed grand sights in other parts of the
world is now clearly revealed. Twenty Yosemites might lie unperceived
anywhere below. Niagara, that Mecca of marvel seekers, would not here
possess the dignity of a trout stream. Your companion, standing at a
short distance on the verge, is an insect to the eye.
Still, such particulars can not long hold the attention, for the
panorama is the real overmastering charm. It is never twice the same.
Although you think you have spelt out every temple and peak and
escarpment, as the angle of sunlight changes there begins a ghostly
advance of colossal forms from the farther side, and what you had taken
to be the ultimate wall is seen to be made up of still other isolated
sculptures, revealed now for the first time by silhouetting shadows. The
scene incessantly changes, flushing and fading, advancing into
crystalline clearness, retiring into slumberous haze.
Should it chance to have rained heavily in the night, next morning the
canyon is completely filled with fog. As the sun mounts, the curtain of
mist suddenly breaks into cloud fleeces, and while you gaze these
fleeces rise and dissipate, leaving the canyon bare. At once around the
bases of the lowest cliffs white puffs begin to appear, creating a scene
of unparalleled beauty as their dazzling cumuli swell and rise and their
number multiplies, until once more they overflow the rim, and it is as
if you stood on some land’s end looking down upon a formless void. Then
quickly comes the complete dissipation, and again the marshaling in the
depths, the upward advance, the total suffusion and the speedy
vanishing, repeated over and over until the warm walls have expelled
their saturation.
Long may the visitor loiter upon the verge, powerless to shake loose
from the charm, tirelessly intent upon the silent transformations until
the sun is low in the west. Then the canyon sinks into mysterious purple
shadow, the far Shinumo Altar is tipped with a golden ray, and against a
leaden horizon the long line of the Echo Cliffs reflects a soft
brilliance of indescribable beauty, a light that, elsewhere, surely
never was on sea or land. Then darkness falls, and should there be a
moon, the scene in part revives in silver light, a thousand spectral
forms projected from inscrutable gloom; dreams of mountains, as in their
sleep they brood on things eternal.
[Illustration: Uncaptioned vista]
[Illustration: Uncaptioned vista]
THE SCIENTIFIC EXPLORER
BY J. W. POWELL