Grand Canyon

“ You can not see the Grand Canyon in one view as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths. It is a region more difficult to traverse than the Alps or the Himalayas, but if strength and courage are sufficient for the task, by a year’s toil a concept of sublimity can be obtained never again to be equaled on the hither side of paradise. ”

“ Those who wish to lounge and rest, surrounded without by all the sublimity of this unequalled scene, and within by all the comforts and luxuries of a modern hotel, will find that the Grand Canyon absolutely satisfies their most exacting demands. Easy and gentle drives, with perfect equipment; over forest roads, in the restfully stimulating atmosphere of Arizona, at an elevation of nearly seven thousand feet, soothe tired brain and nerves. ”

“ As the sun sinks, the shadows lengthen and deepen, bringing out into bold relief features hitherto unobserved, and giving a sublimity to the vast scene that it did not possess in the full blaze of the sun. If clouds obscure the direct rays, all the better, for then other and even more startling effects of beauty and color are produced. At times the whole Canyon seems filled with a luminous mist, in which the temples float into individual prominence in a remarkable manner. ”

“ And I stood in the last few miles of the Grand Canyon spellbound in wonder and admiration, as firmly as I was fixed in the first few miles in surprise and astonishment." (note 29.)
Nature has done her best to adorn the walls of the mighty gorge. We are told of "thousands of rivulets" that "dropped farther and farther down, till the whole of the bright scarlet walls seemed hung with a tapestry of silver threads, the border fringed with white fleecy clouds which hung to the tops of the walls, and through which the points of the upper cliffs shone as scarlet tassels." ”

“ Ever before us has been an unknown danger, heavier than immediate peril. Every waking hour passed in the Grand Canyon has been one of toil. We have watched with deep solicitude the steady disappearance of our scant supply of rations, and from time to time have seen the river snatch a portion of the little left, while we were a-hungered. And danger and toil were endured in those gloomy depths, where ofttimes clouds hid the sky by day and but a narrow zone of stars could be seen at night. ”

“ Robert Brewster Stanton, who made his successful trip through the Canyon in wintertime, comments on this as follows: "It has been the fortune of but few to travel along the bottom of the great chasm for a whole winter, while around you bloom the sweet flowers, and southern birds sing on almost every bush, and at the same time far above, among the upper cliffs, rage and roar, like demons in the air, the grandest and most terrific storms of wind and snow and sleet that I have ever witnessed, even above the clouds among the summit peaks of the Rocky Mountains." ”

“ It is a sight to enjoy in silence, with reverence and with fear. Once seen, it is never to be forgotten, that first glimpse of the greatest of all natural wonders—the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.
The trail made a sudden swerve to the left and followed close to its brink. There were some wooden railings; beyond, a varying strip of broken, rocky moorland; and then, space. Leaving Lizzie, I clambered down a narrow pathway carved in the rocks that led to a jutting prominence known as "Grand View Point." ”

“ It was on October 7th that they entered the mouth of the great gorge. At length “a full view, magnificent beyond description, of the walls of the Grand Canyon” was had, and they were fairly on the road; as rough a road, going down, as one can well imagine, but going up in the teeth of the torrential rapids, hemmed in by close granite walls, it is about as near the impossible as anything that is not absolutely so could be. ”

“ Its distance in this course is little more than 300 miles—but the 300 miles of river are set on every side with cliffs, buttes, towers, pinnacles, amphitheaters, caves, and terraces, exquisitely storm-carved and painted in an endless variety of colors.
The plateau to the south of the Grand Canyon, which we need not describe in parts, is largely covered with a gigantic forest. There are many volcanic 15 mountains and many treeless valleys. In the high forest there are beautiful glades with little stretches of meadow which are spread in summer with a parterre of flowers of many colors. ”

“ Looking into the depths of Grand Canyon from any point within the Bright Angel section, one is immediately impressed by the narrow V-shaped gorge cut in the black rocks at the bottom. This is popularly termed the Granite or Inner Gorge. Within its walls one is in another world, both scenically and geologically. Their steep, bare sides, whose surfaces are chaotic in the extreme, have a history—long and complex. The rocks of which they are formed—some of the oldest known today on the surface of the earth—partially tell the story of the first great era in geologic history. ”

“ The elements that unite to make the Grand Canyon the most sublime spectacle in nature are multifarious and exceedingly diverse. The Cyclopean forms which result from the sculpture of tempests through ages too long for man to compute, are wrought into endless details, to describe which would be a task equal in magnitude to that of describing the stars of the heavens or the multitudinous beauties of the forest with its traceries of foliage presented by oak and pine and poplar, by beech and linden and hawthorn, by tulip and lily and rose, by fern and moss and lichen. ”

“ When in our day men began to explore the Grand Canyon and its numberless tributaries, a great number of indications of man's presence were found on the rim, on the fault lines or breaks in the sheer precipitous walls, on the plateaus and in the Canyon beneath, in the shape of crude house ruins, lookout houses or forts, indifferent trails, cliff-dwellings, hewn-out water cisterns, mescal pits, with countless pieces of broken pottery, arrowheads, stone axes, hammers, mortars, pestles and even cemeteries. ”

“ Wherever one stands, at the eastern end of the Canyon, whether on the north or the south, on the promontories at the rim or on the plateaus beneath, it is the dominating and eye-compelling object. It is, without doubt, the most stupendous mass of nature's carving in the known world. It is seven thousand five hundred and thirty-seven feet above sea level, and over five thousand feet above the Colorado River, which practically laves its base. ”

“ It is a delightful experience to remain over night and sleep on the river sand, especially if the moon be at its full. Then one sees great walking shadows—moving, living, palpable entities. Towers and buttes and temples take on new qualities under the softer luminary of the night.
Here, too, one gets to know the Canyon in a new phase. He is in the trough between two ranges of mountains. To the north and to the south are towering peaks. You forget that you have ridden down, down, to reach this spot. You are in a new country. A majestic range of glorious peaks soars away above you to the north. ”

“ Thomas Moran marries these great characteristics, and in his infinite masses cliffs of immeasurable height are seen.
Thus the elements of the facade of the Grand Canyon change vertically and horizontally. The details of structure can be seen only at close view, but grand effects of structure can be witnessed in great panoramic scenes. Seen in detail, gorges and precipices appear; seen at a distance, in comprehensive views, vast massive structures are presented. The traveler on the brink looks from afar and is overwhelmed with the sublimity of massive forms ”

“ At the Grand Canyon, although we are impressed by the depth of the dark Archean rocks, beneath the plateau surface approximately a mile, yet we marvel even more when we contemplate their great age and the important series of events whose history they partially record. Built up originally as great horizontal deposits of sand and mud, they were bent by mighty crustal movements until high mountains, probably comparable to the present Alps, were formed. ”

“ They are thus able easily and comfortably to take pleasant sightseeing tours away from the hotel to obtain different views of the Canyon. Most visitors here do not realize that the granite gorge district of Grand Canyon alone is about seventy miles in length, ranging from ten to fifteen miles in width, and that from every accessible point along the rim a different outlook may be had, each unsurpassed of its kind. The transportation department is only one of the many pleasing details provided for the comfort of those who come to the Grand Canyon. ”

“ One subdivision of the Grand Canyon is known as Cataract Canyon, and this section "in its 41 miles, has 75 rapids and cataracts, and 57 of these are crowded into 19 miles, with falls, in places, of 16 to 20 feet" (n. 17.)
All accounts concur in representing the stream as remarkable for the fury and number of its falls. To ascend the Colorado is a sheer impossibility and even to descend the stream is an enterprise rarely indeed attempted or achieved. Only rafts or life-boats, backed by pluck and luck, stand a chance of getting through—in pieces. ”

“ Cushing counted forty-four knots in his buckskin fringe from the village to the exit, each knot denoting an abrupt curve or angle in the winding canyons. The Topocobya Trail descends a sheer cliff of stupendous majesty, and the Wallapai Trail is enough to shatter the nervous system of any but the most experienced; but the Hopi Trail ascent out of the Canyon is different, in that, in several places, it passes through narrow clefts, with ponderous, overhanging rocks, the whole course barely wide enough to permit a laden mule to get through with its pack. ”

“ The Colorado is still deepening its gorge. In the Grand Canyon its gradient is seven and one half feet to the mile, but, as in all ungraded rivers, the descent is far from uniform. Graded reaches in soft rock alternate with steeper declivities in hard rock, forming rapids such as, for example, a stretch of ten miles where the fall averages twenty-one feet to the mile. Because of these dangerous rapids the few exploring parties who have traversed the Colorado canyon have done so at the hazard of their lives. ”

“ Placer claim locations and fresh burro tracks were seen in the sand at our last Grand Canyon camp, and a half mile below us we could see out into open country. We found the walls, or the end of the table-land, to be about two thousand feet high, with the canyon emerging at a sharp angle so that a narrow ridge, or "hogs-back" lay on the left side of the stream. Once out in the open the walls were seen to be quite steep, but could be climbed to the top almost any place without trouble. ”

“ The temples which are scattered through the canyon—equal in height, in many cases, to the walls—have their foundation on this plateau. These peaks contain the same stratified rock with a uniform thickness whether in peak or wall, with little displacement and little sign of violent uplift, nearly all this canyon being the work of erosion: 5000 feet from the rim to the river; the edges of six great layers of sedimentary rock laid bare and with a narrow 1300-foot gorge through the igneous rock below—the Grand Canyon of Arizona. ”

“ While there is a fascination to the long, wide stretches of plateau on the rim, and the forest has its attractive points, there are not many prominent features (looking away from the Canyon) that would occupy the attention of travellers. There is little striking in color, in scenery, in rocky contour. Plains, trees, sky, clouds, sunset,—and nearly all is said. But immediately one stands on the rim and looks below, all is changed. Here is feature after feature that compels not only attention but reverent homage. Color such as is seen nowhere else in the world on such a grand scale ”

“ We are on the edge of the great prehistoric lake. The country is seamed with small, rocky gorges, which we cross. They are sometimes lined with scrub-brush, and made beautiful by many colored flowers. All these "draws" are tributary to Havasu (Cataract) Creek, but it is interesting to remember that most of them convey the drainage water away from the rim of the Grand Canyon until, by the subterranean channel before referred to, the stream is taken back to the Havasu Canyon and soon, deep, deep, deep down, some five thousand feet below the rim, is ejected into the muddy Colorado River. ”

“ Along Bright Angel Canyon and in several other places in the Grand Canyon, rocks of Algonkian age, representing accumulations of sediments several thousand feet in thickness, are found. Below and to the north of Desert View (southeast of Cape Royal on the North Rim) they form the open floor of the Canyon. Everywhere the most conspicuous layer of this series is a mud rock of brilliant vermilion color. However, the rocks also include a conglomerate or 6 pebble layer, a dark limestone formed principally by plants, and a purple quartzite made by the consolidation of the grains of a sandstone. ”

“ Even then we talked of building a raft, and of loading the burro on it for a spin on the flood waters. Lucky for us and for the burro that we didn't! We understand the temper of these waters now.
Cape Desolation, a point of the Painted Desert on the west side of the Little Colorado, was almost directly above us, 3200 feet high. Chuar Butte, equally as high and with walls just as nearly perpendicular, extended on into the Grand Canyon on the right side, making the narrowest canyon of this depth that we had seen. ”