THE GRAND CAÑON AND THE FALLS.
No language," says Dr. Hayden, "can do justice to the wonderful
grandeur and beauty of the Grand Cañon." It has no parallel in the
world. Through the eye alone can any just idea be gained of its
strange, awful, fascinating, unearthly blending of the majestic and
the beautiful; and, even in its visible presence, the mind fails to
comprehend the weird and unfamiliar, almost incredible scenes it
reveals. Says Mr. Langford: "The brain reels as we gaze into this
profound and solemn solitude. We shrink from the dizzy verge appalled,
glad to feel the solid earth under our feet, and venture no more,
except with forms extended, and faces barely protruding over the edge
of the precipice. The stillness is horrible. Down, down, down, we see
the river attenuated to a thread, tossing its miniature waves, and
dashing, with puny strength, against the massive walls which imprison
it. All access to its margin is denied, and the dark gray rocks hold
it in dismal shadow. Even the voice of its waters in their convulsive
agony cannot be heard. Uncheered by plant or shrub, obstructed with
massive boulders and by jutting points, it rushes madly on its solitary
course. The solemn grandeur of the scene surpasses description. The
sense of danger with which it impresses you is harrowing in the
extreme. You feel the absence of sound, the oppression of absolute
silence. If you could only hear that gurgling river, if you could see a
living tree in the depth beneath you, if a bird would fly past, if the
wind would move any object in the awful chasm, to break for a moment
the solemn silence that reigns there, it would relieve that tension of
the nerves which the scene has excited, and you would rise from your
prostrate condition and thank God that he had permitted you to gaze,
unharmed, upon this majestic display of natural architecture. As it
is, sympathizing in spirit with the deep gloom of the scene, you crawl
from the dreadful verge, scared lest the firm rock give way beneath and
precipitate you into the horrid gulf."
"The fearful descent into this terrific cañon," Mr. Langford adds, "was
accomplished with great difficulty by Messrs. Hauser and Stickney, at
a point about two miles below the falls. By trigonometrical measurement
they found the chasm at that point to be 1,190 feet deep. Their
ascent from it was perilous, and it was only by making good use of
hands and feet, and keeping the nerves braced to the utmost tension,
that they were enabled to clamber up the precipitous rocks to a safe
landing-place."
Lieutenant Doane also made the descent, somewhat further down the
river, accompanied by one of his company. Selecting the channel of
a small creek, they scrambled down its steep descent, wading in the
stream.
"On entering the ravine, we came at once to hot springs of sulphur,
sulphate of copper, alum, steam jets, etc., in endless variety, some
of them of very peculiar form. One of them in particular, of sulphur,
had built up a tall spire, standing out from the slope of the wall
like an enormous horn, with hot water trickling down its sides. The
creek ran on a bed of solid rock, in many places smooth and slippery,
in others obstructed by masses of débris from the overhanging cliffs
of the sulphureted limestone above. After descending for three miles
in the channel we came to a sort of bench or terrace, the same one
seen previously in following down the creek from our first camp in
the basin. Here we found a large flock of mountain sheep, very tame,
and greatly astonished, no doubt, at our sudden appearance. McConnell
killed one and wounded another, whereupon the rest disappeared,
clambering up the steep walls with a celerity truly astonishing. We
were now 1,500 feet below the brink. From here the creek channel was
more precipitous, and for a mile we made our way down over masses of
rock and fallen trees, splashing in warm water, ducking under cascades,
and skirting close against sidelong places to keep from falling into
boiling caldrons in the channel. After four hours of hard labor we
reached the bottom of the gulf and the margin of the Yellowstone,
famished with thirst, wet and exhausted. The river-water here is quite
warm, and of a villainously alum and sulphurous taste. Its margin is
lined with all kinds of chemical springs, some depositing craters of
calcareous rock, others muddy, black, blue, slaty, or reddish water.
The internal heat renders the atmosphere oppressive, though a strong
breeze draws through the cañon. A frying sound comes constantly to
the ear, mingled with the rush of the current. The place abounds with
sickening and purgatorial smells. We had come down the ravine at least
four miles, and looking upward the fearful wall appeared to reach the
sky. It was about three o'clock P.M., and stars could be distinctly
seen, so much of the sunlight was cut off from entering the chasm. Tall
pines on the extreme verge appeared the height of two or three feet.
The cañon, as before said, was in two benches, with a plateau on either
side, about half way down. This plateau, about a hundred yards in
width, looked from below like a mere shelf against the wall; the total
depth was not less than 2,500 feet, and more probably 3,000. There are
perhaps other cañons longer and deeper than this one, but surely none
combining grandeur and immensity with such peculiarity of formation and
profusion of volcanic or chemical phenomena."
The history of this tremendous chasm is not hard to read. Ages ago this
whole region was the basin of an immense lake. Then it became a centre
of volcanic activity; vast quantities of lava was erupted, which,
cooling under water, took the form of basalt; volumes of volcanic
ash and rock-fragments were thrown out from the craters from time to
time, forming breccia as it sunk through the water and mingled with
the deposits from silicious springs. Over this were spread the later
deposits from the waters of the old lake. In time the country was
slowly elevated, and the lake was drained away. The easily eroded
breccia along the river channel was cut out deeper and deeper as the
ages passed, while springs and creeks and the falling rain combined to
carve the sides of the cañon into the fantastic forms they now present,
by wearing away the softer rock, and leaving the hard basalt and the
firmer hot-spring deposits standing in massive columns and Gothic
pinnacles. The basis material of the old hot spring deposits in silica,
originally white as snow, are now stained by mineral waters with every
shade of red and yellow--from scarlet to rose color, from bright
sulphur to the daintiest tint of cream. When the light falls favorably
on these blended tints the Grand Cañon presents a more enchanting
and bewildering variety of forms and colors than human artist ever
conceived.
The erosion was practically arrested at the upper end of the cañon by a
sudden transition from the softer breccia to hard basalt, and the falls
are the result. From below the Upper Fall the vertical wall of basalt
can be clearly seen passing diagonally across the rim. The Lower Fall
was formed in the same way.
"A grander scene than the lower cataract of the Yellowstone," writes
Mr. Langford, "was never witnessed by mortal eyes. The volume seemed
to be adapted to all the harmonies of the surrounding scenery. Had
it been greater or smaller it would have been less impressive. The
river, from a width of two hundred feet above the fall, is compressed
by converging rocks to one hundred and fifty feet, where it takes the
plunge. The shelf over which it falls is as level and even as a work of
art. The height, by actual line measurement, is a few inches more than
350 feet. It is a sheer, compact, solid, perpendicular sheet, faultless
in all the elements of grandeur and picturesque beauties. The cañon
which commences at the upper fall, half a mile above this cataract,
is here a thousand feet in depth. Its vertical sides rise grey and
dark above the fall to shelving summits, from which one can look down
into the boiling, spray-filled chasm, enlivened with rainbows, and
glittering like a shower of diamonds. From a shelf protruding over the
stream, 500 feet below the top of the cañon, and 180 above the verge
of the cataract, a member of our company, lying prone upon the rock,
let down a cord, with a stone attached, into the gulf, and measured
its profoundest depths. The life and sound of the cataract, with its
sparkling spray and fleecy foam, contrasts strangely with the sombre
stillness of the cañon a mile below. There all was darkness, gloom, and
shadow; here all was vivacity, gayety, and delight. One was the most
unsocial, the other the most social scene in nature. We could talk,
and sing, and whoop, waking the echoes with our mirth and laughter in
presence of the falls, but we could not thus profane the silence of the
cañon. Seen through the cañon below the falls, the river for a mile or
more is broken by rapids and cascades of great variety and beauty.
"Between the Lower and Upper Falls the cañon is two hundred to nearly
four hundred feet deep. The river runs over a level bed of rock, and
is undisturbed by rapids until near the verge of the lower fall. The
upper fall is entirely unlike the other, but in its peculiar character
equally interesting. For some distance above it the river breaks into
frightful rapids. The stream is narrowed between the rocks as it
approaches the brink, and bounds with impatient struggles for release,
leaping through the stony jaws, in a sheet of snow-white foam, over a
precipice nearly perpendicular, 115 feet high.[1] Midway in its descent
the entire volume of water is carried, by the sloping surface of an
intervening ledge, twelve or fifteen feet beyond the vertical base
of the precipice, gaining therefrom a novel and interesting feature.
The churning of the water upon the rocks reduces it to a mass of
foam and spray, through which all the colors of the solar spectrum
are reproduced in astonishing profusion. What this cataract lacks in
sublimity is more than compensated by picturesqueness. The rocks which
overshadow it do not veil it from the open light. It is up amid the
pine foliage which crowns the adjacent hills, the grand feature of a
landscape unrivalled for beauties of vegetation as well as of rock and
glen. The two confronting rocks, overhanging the verge at the height of
a hundred feet or more, could be readily united by a bridge, from which
some of the grandest views of natural scenery in the world could be
obtained--while just in front of, and within reaching distance of the
arrowy water, from a table one-third of the way below the brink of the
fall, all its nearest beauties and terrors may be caught at a glance."
"We rambled around the falls and cañon two days, and left them with the
unpleasant conviction that the greatest wonder of our journey had been
seen."
A few scattered sentences, culled from Dr. Hayden's calmly scientific
account of the falls, will suffice to show that Mr. Langford's
description "o'ersteps not the modesty of nature."
[Illustration: UPPER FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE.]
"Above the Upper Falls the Yellowstone flows through a grassy,
meadow-like valley, with a calm, steady current, giving no warning,
until very near the falls, that it is about to rush over a precipice
140 feet, and then, within a quarter of a mile, again to leap down a
distance of 350 feet.
"From any point of view the Upper Falls are extremely picturesque and
striking. The entire volume of water seems to be, as it were, hurled
off of the precipice with the force which it has accumulated in the
rapids above, so that the mass is detached into the most beautiful
snow-white, bead-like drops, and as it strikes the rocky basin below,
it shoots through the water with a sort of ricochet for the distance of
200 feet. The whole presents in the distance the appearance of a mass
of snow-white foam. On the sides of the basalt walls there is a thick
growth of vegetation, nourished by the spray above, which extends up as
far as the moisture can reach.... After the waters roll over the upper
descent, they flow with great rapidity over the apparently flat rocky
bottom, which spreads out to nearly double its width above the falls,
and continues thus until near the Lower Falls, when the channel again
contracts, and the waters seem, as it were, to gather themselves into
one compact mass and plunge over the descent of 350 feet in detached
drops of foam as white as snow; some of the large globules of water
shoot down like the contents of an exploded rocket.... The entire mass
of the water falls into a circular basin, which has been worn into the
hard rock, so that the rebound is one of the magnificent features of
the scene.... It is a sight far more beautiful, though not so grand or
impressive as that of Niagara Falls. A heavy mist always rises from
the water at the foot of the falls, so dense that one cannot approach
within 200 or 300 feet, and even then the clothes will be drenched in
a few moments. Upon the yellow, nearly vertical wall of the west side,
the mist mostly falls, and for 300 feet from the bottom the wall is
covered with a thick matting of mosses, sedges, grasses, and other
vegetation of the most vivid green, which have sent their small roots
into the softened rocks, and are nourished by the ever-ascending spray.
At the base and quite high up on the sides of the cañon, are great
quantities of talus, and through the fragments of rocks and decomposed
spring deposits may be seen the horizontal strata of breccia."
On his return down the opposite or eastern side of the river, Colonel
Barlow descended to the foot of the Lower Fall for the purpose of
exploring the cañon. He says: "I expected this to be an undertaking of
great difficulty and attended with some danger, but entering a sharp
and narrow gorge or fissure in the side of the cañon, immediately below
the great fall, I found the descent much easier than was anticipated.
It proved to be very steep, but the rock being solid, with projecting
angles, there was little danger to a careful climber. A slope of
loose and finely broken rock, a hundred feet in height, moist from
the falling spray, terminated the descent. Sliding to the bottom of
this slope, I stood at the foot of the great fall, 350 feet below its
crest, the walls of the cañon rising 700 feet. My first impression
on beholding this fall from below was one of disappointment; it did
not appear as high as I expected. The fall, however, was grand, and
presented a symmetrical and unbroken sheet of white foam, set in dark
masses of rock, while rainbows were formed in the spray from almost
every point of view. The steep rocks near the falls, constantly wet
with rising mist, were covered with vegetation of an intensely green
color. The river below runs with the velocity of a torrent, rushing
down declivities, spinning round sharp angles, and dashing itself into
spray at every turn. I found it impossible to follow the bed of the
stream, the steep and slippery side affording no footing whatever, and
crumbling at the slightest touch."