Ralph Stockman Tarr

“ The main river has cleft the plateau in a huge gash; innumerable side gorges have cut it to right and left; and weathering has etched out the cliffs and crags and helped to paint it in the gaudy colour bands that stretch before the eye. There is grandeur here and weirdness in abundance, but beauty is lacking. Powell puts the case graphically when he writes: “A wall of homogeneous granite like that in the Yosemite is but a naked wall, whether it be 1000 or 5000 ft. high. Hundreds and thousands of feet mean nothing to the eye when they stand in a meaningless front. ”

“ A mountain covered by pure snow 10,000 ft. high has but little more effect on the imagination than a mountain of snow 1000 ft. high—it is but more of the same thing; but a façade of seven systems of rock has its sublimity multiplied sevenfold.”
To the ordinary person most of the Grand Canyon is at present inaccessible, for, as Powell states, “a year scarcely suffices to see it all”; and “it is a region more difficult to traverse than the Alps or the Himalayas.” But a part of the canyon is now easily accessible to tourists. ”

“ The Colorado river is made by the junction of two large streams, the Green and Grand, fed by the rains and snows of the Rocky Mountains. It has a length of about 2000 m. and a drainage area of 255,000 sq. ”