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HAPPY nowadays is the
tourist, with earth's wonders, new and old, spread invitingly open before
him, and a host of able workers as his slaves making everything easy,
padding plush about him, grading roads for him, boring tunnels, moving hills
out of his way, eager, like the Devil, to show him all the kingdoms of the
world and their glory and foolishness, spiritualizing travel for him with
lightning and steam, abolishing space and time and almost everything else.
Little .children and tender, pulpy people, as well as storm-seasoned
explorers, may now go almost everywhere in smooth comfort, cross oceans and
deserts scarce accessible to fishes and birds, and, dragged by steel horses,
go up high mountains, riding gloriously beneath starry showers of sparks,
ascending like Elijah in a whirlwind and chariot of fire.
First of the wonders of the
great West to be brought within reach of the tourist were the Yosemite and
the Big Trees, on the completion of the first transcontinental railway; next
came the Yellowstone and icy Alaska, by the northern roads; and last the
Grand Caņon of the Colorado, which, naturally the hardest to reach, has now
become, by a branch of the Santa Fe, the most accessible of all.
Of course, with this
wonderful extension of steel ways through our wildness there is loss as well
as gain. Nearly all railroads are bordered by belts of desolation. The
finest wilderness perishes as if stricken with pestilence. Bird and beast
people, if not the dryads, are frightened from the groves. Too often the
groves also vanish, leaving nothing but ashes. Fortunately, nature has a few
big places beyond man's power to spoil - the ocean, the two icy ends of the
globe, and the Grand Caņon.
When I first heard of the
Santa Fe trains running to the edge of the Grand Caņon of Arizona, I was
troubled with thoughts of the disenchantment likely to follow. But last
winter, when I saw those trains crawling along through the pines of the
Coconino Forest and close up to the brink of the chasm at Bright Angel, I
was glad to discover that in the presence of such stupendous scenery they
are nothing. The locomotives and trains are mere beetles and caterpillars,
and the noise they make is as little disturbing as the hooting of an owl in
the lonely woods.
In a dry, hot, monotonous
forested plateau, seemingly boundless, you come suddenly and without warning
upon the abrupt edge of a gigantic sunken landscape of the wildest, most
multitudinous features, and those features, sharp and angular, are made out
of flat beds of limestone and sandstone forming a spiry, jagged, gloriously
colored mountain-range countersunk in a level gray plain. It is a hard job
to sketch it even in scrawniest outline; and, try as I may, not in the least
sparing myself, I cannot tell the hundredth part of the wonders of its
features - the side-caflons, gorges, alcoves, cloisters, and amphitheaters
of vast sweep and depth, carved in its magnificent walls; the throng of
great architectural rocks it contains resembling castles, cathedrals,
temples, and palaces, towered and spired and painted, some of them nearly a
mile high, yet beneath one's feet. All this, however, is less difficult than
to give any idea of the impression of wild, primeval beauty and power one
receives in merely gazing from its brink. The view down the gulf of color
and over the rim of its wonderful wall, more than any other view I know,
leads us to think of our earth as a star with stars swimming in light, every
radiant spire pointing the way to the heavens.
But it is impossible to
conceive what the canon is, or what impression it makes, from descriptions
or pictures, however good. Naturally it is untellable even to those who have
seen something perhaps a little like it on a small scale in this same
plateau region. One's most extravagant expectations are indefinitely
surpassed, though one expects much from what is said of it as "the biggest
chasm on earth" - "so big is it that all other big things - Yosemite, the
Yellowstone, the Pyramids, Chicago - all would be lost if tumbled into it."
Naturally enough, illustrations as to size are sought for among other canons
like or unlike it, with the common result of worse confounding confusion.
The prudent keep silence. It was once said that the "Grand Caņon could put a
dozen Yosemites in its vest pocket."
The justly famous Grand Caņon
of the Yellowstone is, like the Colorado, gorgeously colored and abruptly
countersunk in a plateau, and both are mainly the work of water. But the
Colorado's caņon is more than a thousand times larger, and as a score or two
of new buildings of ordinary size would not appreciably change the general
view of a great city, so hundreds of Yellowstones might be eroded in the
sides of the Colorado Caņon without noticeably augmenting its size or the
richness of its sculpture.
But it is not true that the
great Yosemite rocks would be thus lost or hidden. Nothing of their kind in
the world, so far as I know, rivals El Capitan and Tissiack, much less
dwarfs or in any way belittles them. None of the sandstone or limestone
precipices of the caņon that I have seen or heard of approaches in smooth,
flawless strength and grandeur the granite face of El Capitan or the Tenaya
side of Cloud's Rest. These colossal cliffs, types of permanence, are about
three thousand and six thousand feet high; those of the caņon that are sheer
are about half as high, and are types of fleeting change; while
glorious-domed Tissiack, noblest of mountain buildings, far from being
overshadowed or lost in this rosy, spiry caņon company, would draw every
eye, and, in serene majesty, "aboon them a'" she would take her place -
castle, temple, palace, or tower. Nevertheless a noted writer, comparing the
Grand Caņon in a general way with the glacial Yosemite, says: "And the
Yosemite - ah, the lovely Yosemite! Dumped down into the wilderness of
gorges and mountains, it would take a guide who knew of its existence a long
time to find it." This is striking, and shows up well above the levels of
commonplace description; but it is confusing, and has the fatal fault of not
being true. As well try to describe an eagle by putting a lark in it. "And,
the lark - ah, the lovely lark! Dumped down the red, royal gorge of the
eagle, it would be hard to find." Each in its own place is better, singing
at heaven's gate, and sailing the sky with the clouds.
Every feature of Nature's big
face is beautiful, -height and hollow, wrinkle, furrow, and line, - and this
is the main master-furrow of its kind on our continent, incomparably greater
and more impressive than any other yet discovered, or likely to be
discovered, now that all the great rivers have been traced to their heads.
The Colorado River rises in
the heart of the continent on the dividing ranges and ridges between the two
oceans, drains thousands of snowy mountains through narrow or spacious
valleys, and thence through canons of every color, sheer-walled and deep,
all of which seem to be represented in this one grand caņon of caflons.
It is very hard to give
anything like an adequate conception of its size; much more of its color,
its vast wall-sculpture, the wealth of ornate architectural buildings that
fill it, or, most of all, the tremendous impression it makes. According to
Major Powell, it is about two hundred and seventeen miles long, from five to
fifteen miles wide from rim to rim, and from about five thousand to six
thousand feet deep. So tremendous a chasm would be one of the world's
greatest wonders even if, like ordinary canons cut in sedimentary rocks, it
were empty and its walls were simple. But instead of being plain, the walls
are so deeply and elaborately carved into all sorts of recesses - alcoves,
cirques, amphitheaters, and side-canons- that, were you to trace the rim
closely around on both sides, your journey would be nearly a thousand miles
long. Into all these recesses the level, continuous beds of rock in ledges
and benches, with their various colors, run like broad ribbons, marvelously
beautiful and effective even at a distance of ten or twelve miles. And the
vast space these glorious walls inclose, instead of being empty, is crowded
with gigantic architectural rock- forms gorgeously colored and adorned with
towers and spires like works of art.
Looking down from this level
plateau, we are more impressed with a feeling of being on the top of
everything than when looking from the summit of a mountain. From side to
side of the vast gulf, temples, palaces, towers, and spires come soaring up
in thick array half a mile or nearly a mile above their sunken, hidden
bases, some to a level with our standpoint, but none higher. And in the
inspiring morning light all are so fresh and rosy-looking that they seem
new-born; as if, like the quick-growing crimson snow-plants of the
California woods, they had just sprung up, hatched by the warm, brooding,
motherly weather.
In trying to describe the
great pines and sequoias of the Sierra, I have often thought that if one of
these trees could be set by itself in some city park, its grandeur might
there be impressively realized; while in its home forests, where all
magnitudes are great, the weary, satiated traveler sees none of them truly.
It is so with these majestic rock structures.
Though mere residual masses
of the plateau, they are dowered with the grandeur and repose of mountains,
together with the finely chiseled carving and modeling of man's temples and
palaces, and often, to a considerable extent, with their symmetry. Some,
closely observed, look like ruins; but even these stand plumb and true, and
show architectural forms loaded with lines strictly regular and decorative,
and all are arrayed in colors that storms and time seem only to brighten.
They are not placed in regular rows in line with the river, but "a' through
ither," as the Scotch say, in lavish, exuberant crowds, as if nature in
wildest extravagance held her bravest structures as common as gravel-piles.
Yonder stands a spiry cathedral nearly five thousand feet in height, nobly
symmetrical, with sheer buttressed walls and arched doors and windows, as
richly finished and decorated with sculptures as the great rock temples of
India or Egypt. Beside it rises a huge castle with arched gateway, turrets,
watch-towers, ramparts, etc., and to right and left palaces, obelisks, and
pyramids fairly fill the gulf, all colossal and all lavishly painted and
carved. Here and there a flat-topped structure may be seen, or one
imperfectly domed; but the prevailing style is ornate Gothic, with many
hints of Egyptian and Indian.
Throughout this vast extent
of wild architecture - nature's own capital city - there seem to be no
ordinary dwellings. All look like grand and important public structures,
except perhaps some of the lower pyramids, broad- based and sharp-pointed,
covered with down- flowing talus like loosely set tents with hollow, sagging
sides. The roofs often have disintegrated rocks heaped and draggled over
them, but in the main the masonry is firm and Laid in regular courses, as if
done by square and rule.
Nevertheless they are ever
changing: their tops are now a dome, now a flat table or a spire, as harder
or softer strata are reached in their slow degradation, while the sides,
with all their fine moldings, are being steadily undermined and eaten away.
But no essential change in style or color is thus effected. From century to
century they stand the same. What seems confusion among the rough
earthquake- shaken crags nearest one comes to order as soon as the main plan
of the various structures appears. Every building, however complicated and
laden with ornamental lines, is at one with itself and every one of its
neighbors, for the same characteristic controlling belts of color and solid
strata extend with wonderful constancy for very great distances, and pass
through and give style to thousands of separate structures, however their
smaller characters may vary.
Of all the various kinds of
ornamental work displayed - carving, tracery on cliff-faces, moldings,
arches, pinnacles - none is more admirably effective or charms more than the
webs of rain-channeled taluses. Marvelously extensive, without the slightest
appearance of waste or excess, they cover roofs and dome- tops and the base
of every cliff, belt each spire and pyramid and massy, towering temple, and
in beautiful continuous lines go sweeping along the great walls in and out
around all the intricate system of side-canons, amphitheaters, cirques, and
scallops into which they are sculptured. From one point hundreds of miles of
this fairy embroidery may be traced. It is all so fine and orderly that it
would seem that not only had the clouds and streams been kept harmoniously
busy in the making of it, but that every raindrop sent like a bullet to a
mark had been the subject of a separate thought, so sure is the outcome of
beauty through the stormy centuries. Surely nowhere else are there
illustrations so striking of the natural beauty of desolation and death, so
many of nature's own mountain buildings wasting in glory of high desert air
- going to dust. See how steadfast in beauty they all are in their going.
Look again and again how the rough, dusty boulders and sand of
disintegration from the upper ledges wreathe in beauty the next and next
below with these wonderful taluses, and how the colors are finer the faster
the waste. We oftentimes see Nature giving beauty for ashes - as in the
flowers of a prairie after fire -but here the very dust and ashes are
beautiful.
Gazing across the mighty
chasm, we at last discover that it is not its great depth nor length, nor
yet these wonderful buildings, that most impresses us. It is its immense
width, sharply defined by precipitous walls plunging suddenly down from a
flat plain, declaring in terms instantly apprehended that the vast gulf is a
gash in the once unbroken plateau, made by slow, orderly erosion and removal
of huge beds of rocks. Other valleys of erosion are as great -in all their
dimensions some are greater -but none of these produces an effect on the
imagination at once so quick and profound, coming without study, given at a
glance. Therefore by far the greatest and most influential feature of this
view from Bright Angel or any other of the caņon views is the opposite wall.
Of the one beneath our feet we see only fragmentary sections in cirques and
amphitheaters and on the sides of the out-jutting promontories between them,
while the other, though far distant, is beheld in all its glory of color and
noble proportions - the one supreme beauty and wonder to which the eye is
ever turning. For while charming with its beauty it tells the story of the
stupendous erosion of the caņon - the foundation of the unspeakable
impression made on everybody. It seems a gigantic statement for even nature
to make, all in one mighty stone word, apprehended at once like a burst of
light, celestial color its natural vesture, coming in glory to mind and
heart as to a home prepared for it from the very beginning. Wildness so
godIul, cosmic, primeval, bestows a new sense of earth's beauty and size.
Not even from high mountains does the world seem so wide, so like a star in
glory of light on its way through the heavens.
I have observed
scenery-hunters of all sorts getting first views of yosemites, glaciers,
White Mountain ranges, etc. Mixed with the enthusiasm which such scenery
naturally excites, there is often weak gushing, and many splutter aloud like
little waterfalls. Here, for a few moments at least, there is silence, and
all are in dead earnest, as if awed and hushed by an earthquake - perhaps
until the cook cries "Breakfast!" or the stable-boy "Horses are ready!" Then
the poor unfortunates, slaves of regular habits, turn quickly away, gasping
and muttering as if wondering where • they had been and what had enchanted
them.
Roads have been made from
Bright Angel Hotel through the Coconino Forest to the ends of outstanding
promontories, commanding extensive views up and down the caņon. The nearest
of them, three or four miles east and west, are McNeil's Point and Rowe's
Point; the latter, besides commanding the eternally interesting caņon, gives
wide-sweeping views southeast and west over the dark forest roof to the San
Francisco and Mount Trumbull volcanoes - the bluest of mountains over the
blackest of level woods.
Instead of thus riding in
dust with the crowd, more will be gained by going quietly afoot along the
rim at different times of day and night, free to observe the vegetation, the
fossils in the rocks, the seams beneath overhanging ledges once inhabited by
Indians, and to watch the stupendous scenery in the changing lights and
shadows, clouds, showers, and storms. One need not go hunting the so- called
"points of interest." The verge anywhere, everywhere, is a point of interest
beyond one's wildest dreams.
As yet, few of the
promontories or throng of mountain buildings in the caņon are named. Nor
among such exuberance of forms are names thought of by the bewildered,
hurried tourist. He would be as likely to think of names for waves in a
storm. The Eastern and Western Cloisters, Hindu Amphitheater, Cape Royal,
Powell's Plateau, Grand View Point, Point Sublime, Bissell and Moran Points,
the Temple of Set, Vishnu's Temple, Shiva's Temple, Twin Temples, Tower of
Babel, Hance's Column - these fairly good names given by Dutton, Holmes,
Moran, and others are scattered over a large stretch of the caņon
wilderness.
All the caņon rock-beds are
lavishly painted, except a few neutral bars and the granite notch at the
bottom occupied by the river, which makes but little sign. It is a vast
wilderness of rocks in'a sea of light, colored and glowing like oak and
maple woods in autumn, when the sun-gold is richest. I have just said that
it is impossible to learn what the caņon is like from descriptions and
pictures. Powell's and Dutton's descriptions present magnificent views not
only of the caņon but of all the grand region round about it; and Holmes's
drawings, accompanying Dutton's report, are wonderfully good. Surely
faithful and loving skill can go no farther in putting the multitudinous
decorated forms on paper. But the colors, the living, rejoicing colors,
chanting morning and evening in chorus to heaven! Whose brush or pencil,
however lovingly inspired, can give us these? And if paint is of no effect,
what hope lies in pen-work? Only this: some may be incited by it to go and
see for themselves.
No other range of mountainous
rock-work of anything like the same extent have I seen that is so strangely,
boldly, lavishly colored. The famous Yellowstone Caņon below the falls comes
to mind; but, wonderful as it is, and well deserved as is its fame, compared
with this it is only a bright rainbow ribbon at the roots of the pines. Each
of the series of level, continuous beds of carboniferous rocks of the caņon
has, as we have seen, its own characteristic color. The summit
limestone-beds are pale yellow; next below these are the beautiful
rose-colored cross-bedded sandstones; next there are a thousand feet of
brilliant red sandstones; and below these the red wall limestones, over two
thousand feet thick, rich massy red, the greatest and most influential of
the series, and forming the main color-fountain. Between these are many
neutral-tinted beds. The prevailing colors are wonderfully deep and clear,
changing and blending with varying intensity from hour to hour, day to day,
season to season; throbbing, wavering, glowing, responding to every passing
cloud or storm, a world of color in itself, now burning in separate rainbow
bars streaked and blotched with shade, now glowing in one smooth, all-
pervading ethereal radiance like the alpenglow, uniting the rocky world with
the heavens.
The dawn, as in all the pure,
dry desert country is ineffably beautiful; and when the first level sunbeams
sting the domes and spires, with what a burst of power the big, wild days
begin! The dead and the living, rocks and hearts alike, awake and sing the
new-old song of creation. All the massy headlands and salient angles of the
walls, and the multitudinous temples and palaces, seem to catch the light at
once, and cast thick black shadows athwart hollow and gorge, bringing out
details as well as the main massive features of the architecture; while all
the rocks, as if wild with life, throb and quiver and glow in the glorious
sunburst, rejoicing. Every rock temple then becomes a temple of music; every
spire and pinnacle an angel of light and song, shouting color hallelujahs.
As the day draws to a close,
shadows, wondrous, black, and thick, like those of the morning, fill up the
wall hollows, while the glowing rocks, their rough angles burned off, seem
soft and hot to the heart as they stand submerged in purple haze, which now
fills the caņon like a sea. Still deeper, richer, more divine grow the great
walls and temples, until in the supreme flaming glory of sunset the whole
caņon is transfigured, as if all the life and light of centuries of sunshine
stored up and condensed in the rocks was now being poured forth as from one
glorious fountain, flooding both earth and sky.
Strange to say, in the full
white effulgence of the midday hours the bright colors grow dim and
terrestrial in common gray haze; and the rocks, after the manner of
mountains, seem to crouch and drowse and shrink to less than half their real
stature, and have nothing to say to one, as if not at home. But it is fine
to see how quickly they come to life and grow radiant and communicative as
soon as a band of white clouds come floating by. As if shouting for joy,
they seem to spring up to meet them in hearty salutation, eager to touch
them and beg their blessings. It is just in the midst of these dull midday
hours that the caņon clouds are born.
A good storm-cloud full of
lightning and rain on its way to its work on a sunny desert day is a
glorious object. Across the can-on, opposite the hotel, is a little
tributary of the Colorado called Bright Angel Creek. A fountain- cloud still
better deserves the name "Angel of the Desert Wells" - clad in bright
plumage, carrying cool shade and living water to countless animals and
plants ready to perish, noble in form and gesture, seeming able for
anything, pouring life-giving, wonder-working floods from its alabaster
fountains, as if some sky-lake had broken. To every gulch and gorge on its
favorite ground is given a passionate torrent, roaring, replying to the
rejoicing lightning - stones, tons in weight, hurrying away as if
frightened, showing something of the way Grand Caņon work is done. Most of
the fertile summer clouds of the caņon are of this sort, massive, swelling
cumuli, growing rapidly, displaying delicious tones of purple and gray in
the hollows of their sun-beaten houses, showering favored areas of the
heated landscape, and vanishing in an hour or two. Some, busy and
thoughtful-looking, glide with beautiful motion along the middle of the
caņon in flocks, turning aside here and there, lingering as if studying the
needs of particular spots, exploring side-canons, peering into hollows like
birds seeking nest-places, or hovering aloft on outspread wings. They scan
all the red wilderness, dispensing their blessings of cool shadows and rain
where the need is the greatest, refreshing the rocks, their offspring as
well as the vegetation, continuing their sculpture, deepening gorges and
sharpening peaks. Sometimes, blending all together, they weave a ceiling
from rim to rim, perhaps opening a window here and there for sunshine to
stream through, suddenly lighting some palace or temple and making it flare
in the rain as if on fire.
Sometimes, as one sits gazing
from a high, jutting promontory, the sky all clear, showing not the
slightest wisp or penciling, a bright band of cumuli will appear suddenly,
coming up the caņon in single file, as if tracing a well- known trail,
passing in review, each in turn darting its lances and dropping its shower,
making a row of little vertical rivers in the air above the big brown one.
Others seem to grow from mere points, and fly high above the caņon, yet
following its course for a long time, noiseless, as if hunting, then
suddenly darting lightning at unseen marks, and hurrying on. Or they loiter
here and there as if idle, like laborers out of work, waiting to be hired.
Half a dozen or more showers
may oftentimes be seen falling at once, while far the greater part of the
sky is in sunshine, and not a raindrop comes nigh one. These thundershowers
from as many separate clouds, looking like wisps of long hair, may vary
greatly in effects. The pale, faint streaks are showers that fail to reach
the ground, being evaporated on the way down through the dry, thirsty air,
like streams in deserts. Many, on the other hand, which in the distance seem
insignificant, are really heavy rain, however local; these are the gray
wisps well zigzagged with lightning. The darker ones are torrent rain, which
on broad, steep slopes of favorable conformation give rise to so-called
"cloud-bursts"; and wonderful is the commotion they cause. The gorges and
gulches below them, usually dry, break out in loud uproar, with a sudden
downrush of muddy, boulder-laden floods. Down they all go in one
simultaneous gush, roaring like lions rudely awakened, each of the tawny
brood actually kicking up a dust at the first onset.
During the winter months snow
falls over all the high plateau, usually to a considerable depth, whitening
the rim and the roofs of the caņon buildings. But last winter, when I
arrived at Bright Angel in the middle of January, there was no snow in
sight, and the ground was dry, greatly to my disappointment, for I had made
the trip mainly to see the caņon in its winter garb. Soothingly I was
informed that this was an exceptional season, and that the good snow might
arrive at any time. After waiting a few days, I gladly hailed a broad-browed
oloud coming grandly on from the west in big promising blackness, very
unlike the white sailors of the summer skies. Under the lee of a rim-ledge,
with another snow-lover, I watched its movements as it took possession of
the caņon and all the adjacent region in sight. Trailing its gray fringes
over the spiry tops of the great temples and towers, it gradually settled
lower, embracing them all with ineffable kindness and gentleness of touch,
and fondled the little cedars and pines as they quivered eagerly in the wind
like young birds begging their mothers to feed them. The first flakes and
crystals began to fly about noon, sweeping straight up the middle of the
can-on, and swirling in magnificent eddies along the sides. Gradually the
hearty swarms closed their ranks, and all the caņon was lost in gray gloom
except a short section of the wall and a few trees beside us, which looked
glad with snow in their needles and about their feet as they leaned out over
the gulf. Suddenly the storm opened with magical effect to the north over
the caņon of Bright Angel Creek, inclosing a sunlit mass of the caņon
architecture, spanned by great white concentric arches of cloud like the
bows of a silvery aurora. Above these and a little back of them was a series
of upboiling purple clouds, and high above all, in the background, a range
of noble cumuli towered aloft like snow-laden mountains, their pure pearl
bosses flooded with sunshine. The whole noble picture, calmly glowing, was
framed in thick gray gloom, which soon closed over it; and the storm went
on, opening and closing until night covered all.
Two days later, when we were
on a jutting point about eighteen miles east of Bright Angel and one
thousand feet higher, we enjoyed another storm of equal glory as to cloud
effects, though only a few inches of snow fell. Before the storm began we
had a magnificent view of this grander upper part of the caņon and also of
the Coconino Forest and the Painted Desert. The march of the clouds with
their storm banners flying over this sublime landscape was unspeakably
glorious, and so also was the breaking up of the storm next morning - the
mingling of silver-capped rock, sunshine, and cloud.
Most tourists make out to be
in a hurry even here; therefore their days or hours would be best spent on
the promontories nearest the hotel. Yet a surprising number go down the
Bright Angel Trail to the brink of the inner gloomy granite gorge
overlooking the river. Deep canons attract like high mountains; the deeper
they are, the more surely are we drawn into them. On foot, of course, there
is no danger whatever, and, with ordinary precautions, but little on
animals. In comfortable tourist faith, unthinking, unlearing, down go men,
women, and children on whatever is offered, horse, mule, or burro, as if
saying with Jean Paul, "fear nothing but fear" - not without reason, for
these caņon trails down the stairways of the gods are less dangerous than
they seem, less dangerous than home stairs. The guides are cautious, and so
are the experienced, much-enduring beasts. The scrawniest Rosinantes and
wizened-rat mules cling hard to the rocks endwise or sidewise, like lizards
or ants. From terrace to terrace, climate to climate, down one creeps in sun
and shade, through gorge and gully and grassy ravine, and, after a long
scramble on foot, at last beneath the mighty cliffs one comes to the grand,
roaring river.
To the mcmntaineer the depth
of the caņon, from five thousand to six thousand feet, will not seem so very
wonderful, for he has often explored others that are about as deep But the
most experienced will be awestruck by the vast extent of strange,
countersunk scenery, the multitude of huge rock monuments of painted masonry
built up in regular courses towering above, beneath, and round about him. By
the Bright Angel Trail the last fifteen hundred feet of the descent to the
river has to be made afoot down the gorge of Indian Garden Creek. Most of
the visitors do not like this part, and are content to stop at the end of
the horse-trail and look down on the dull-brown flood from the edge of the
Indian Garden Plateau. By the new Hance Trail, excepting a few daringly
steep spots, you can ride all the way to the river, where there is a good
spacious camp-ground in a mesquite grove. This trail, built by brave Hance,
begins on the highest part of the rim, eight thousand feet above the sea, a
thousand feet higher than the head of Bright Angel Trail, and the descent is
a little over six thousand feet, through a wonderful variety of climate and
life. Often late in the fall, when frosty winds are blowing and snow is
flying at one end of the trail, tender plants are blooming in balmy summer
weather at the other. The trip down and up can be made afoot easily in a
day. In this way one is free to observe the scenery and vegetation, instead
of merely clinging to his animal and watching its steps. But all who have
time should go prepared to camp awhile on the river-bank, to rest and learn
something about the plants and animals and the mighty flood roaring past. In
cool, shady amphitheaters at the head of the trail there are groves of white
silver fir and Douglas spruce, with ferns and saxifrages that recall snowy
mountains; below these, yellow pine, nut pine, juniper, hop-hornbeam, ash,
maple, holly-leaved berberis, cowania, spirea, dwarf oak, and other small
shrubs and trees. In dry gulches and on taluses and sun-beaten crags are
sparsely scattered yuccas, cactuses, agave, etc. Where springs gush from the
rocks there are willow thickets, grassy flats, and bright, flowery gardens,
and in the hottest recesses the delicate abronia, mesquite, woody composit,
and arborescent cactuses.
The most striking and
characteristic part of this widely varied vegetation are the cactacea -
strange, leafless, old-fashioned plants with beautiful flowers and fruit, in
every way able and admirable. While grimly defending themselves with
innumerable barbed spears, they offer both food and drink to man and beast.
Their juicy globes and disks and fluted cylindrical columns are almost the
only desert wells that never go dry, and they always seem to rejoice the
more and grow plumper And juicier the hotter the sunshine and sand. Some are
spherical, like rolled-up porcupines, crouching in rock-hollows beneath a
mist of gray lances, unmoved by the wildest winds. Others, standing as erect
as bushes and trees or tall branchless pillars crowned with magnificent
flowers, their prickly armor sparkling, look boldly abroad over the glaring
desert, making the strangest forests ever seen or dreamed of. Cereus
giganteus, the grim chief of the desert tribe, is often thirty or forty feet
high in southem Arizona. Several species of tree yuccas in the same deserts,
laden in early spring with superb white lilies, form forests hardly less
wonderful, though here they grow singly or in small lonely groves. The low,
almost stemless Yucca baccata, with beautiful lily flowers and sweet
banana-like fruit, prized by the Indians, is common along the caņon-rim,
growing on lean, rocky soil beneath mountain- mahogany, nut pines, and
junipers, beside dense flowery mats of Spirwa cspitosa and the beautiful
pinnate-leaved Spirwa mulefolia. The nut pine (Pinus edulis) scattered along
the upper slopes and roofs of the caņon buildings, is the principal tree of
the strange dwarf Coconino Forest. It is a picturesque stub of a pine about
twenty-five feet high, usually with dead, lichened limbs thrust through its
rounded head, and grows on crags and fissured rock tables, braving heat and
frost, snow and drought, and continuing patiently, faithfully fruitful for
centuries. Indians and insects and almost every desert bird and beast come
to it to be fed.
To civilized people from corn
and cattle and wheat-field countries the caņon at first sight seems as
uninhabitable as a glacier crevasse, utterly silent and barren. Nevertheless
it is the home of a multitude of our fellow-mortals, men as well as animals
and plants. Centuries ago it was inhabited by tribes of Indians, who, long
before Columbus saw America, built thousands of stone houses in its crags,
and large ones, some of them several stories high, with hundreds of rooms,
on the mesas of the adjacent regions. Their cliff-dwellings, almost
numberless, are still to be seen in the caņon, scattered along both sides
from top to bottom and throughout its entire length, built of stone and
mortar in seams and fissures like swallows' nests, or on isolated ridges and
peaks. The ruins of larger buildings are found on open spots by the river,
but most of them aloft on the brink of the wildest, giddiest precipices,
sites evidently chosen for safety from enemies, and seemingly accessible
only to the birds of the air. Many caves were also used as dwelling-places,
as were mere seams on cliff-fronts formed by unequal weathering and with or
without outer or side walls; and some of them were covered with colored
pictures of animals. The most interesting of these cliff-dwellings had
pathetic little ribbonlike strips of garden on narrow terraces, where
irrigating-water could be carried to them - most romantic of sky-gardens,
but eloquent of hard times.
In recesses along the river
and on the first plateau flats above its gorge were fields and gardens of
considerable size, where irrigating-ditches may still be traced. Some of
these ancient gardens are still cultivated by Indians, descendants of
cliff-dwellers, who raise corn, squashes, melons, potatoes, etc., to
reinforce the produce of the many wild food-furnishing plants - nuts, beans,
berries, yucca and cactus fruits, grass and sunflower seeds, etc. - and the
flesh of animals - deer, rabbits, lizards, etc. The caņon Indians I have met
here seem to be living much as did their ancestors, though not now driven
into rock-dens. They are able, erect men, with commanding eyes, which
nothing that they wish to see can escape. They are never in a hurry, have a
strikingly measured, deliberate, bearish manner of moving the limbs and
turning the head, are capable of enduring weather, thirst, hunger, and
overabundance, and are blessed with stomachs which triumph over everything
the wilderness may offer. Evidently their lives are not bitter.
The largest of the caņon
animals one is likely to see is the wild sheep, or Rocky Mountain bighorn, a
most admirable beast, with limbs that never fail, at home on the most
nerve-trying precipices, acquainted with all the springs and passes and
broken-down jump- able places in the sheer ribbon cliffs, bounding from crag
to crag in easy grace and confidence of strength, his great horns held high
above his shoulders, wild red blood beating and hissing through every fiber
of him like the wind through a quivering mountain pine.
Deer also are occasionally
met in the caņon, making their way to the river when the wells of the
plateau are dry. Along the short spring streams beavers are still busy, as
is shown by the cottonwood and willow timber they have cut and peeled, found
in all the river drift- heaps. In the most barren cliffs and gulches there
dwell a multitude of lesser animals, well- dressed, clear-eyed, happy little
beasts - wood rats, kangaroo rats, gophers, wood mice, skunks, rabbits,
bob-cats, and many others, gathering food, or dozing in their sun-warmed
dens. Lizards, too, of every kind and color are here enjoying life on the
hot cliffs, and making the brightest of them brighter.
Nor is there any lack of
feathered people. The golden eagle may be seen, and the osprey, hawks, jays,
hummingbirds, the mourning dove, and cheery familiar singers - the black-
headed grosbeak, robin, bluebird, Townsend's thrush, and many warblers,
sailing the sky and enlivening the rocks and bushes through all the caņon
wilderness.
Here at Hance's river-camp or
a few miles above it brave Powell and his brave men passed their first night
in the caņon on their adventurous voyage of discovery thirty-three [Muir
wrote this description in 1902; Major J. W. Powell made his descent through
the caņon, with small boats, in 1869. Editor.] years ago. They faced a
thousand dangers, open or hidden, now in their boats gladly sliding down
swift, smooth reaches, now rolled over and over in back-combing surges of
rough, roaring cataracts, sucked under in eddies, swimming like beavers,
tossed and beaten like castaway drift - stout-hearted, undaunted, doing
their work through it all. After a month of this they floated smoothly out
of the dark, gloomy, roaring abyss into light and safety two hundred miles
below. As the flood rushes past us, heavy-laden with desert mud, we
naturally think of its sources, its countless silvery branches outspread on
thousands of snowy mountains along the crest of the continent, and the life
of them, the beauty of them, their history and romance. Its topmost springs
are far north and east in Wyoming and Colorado, on the snowy Wind River,
Front, Park, and Sawatch Ranges, dividing the two ocean waters, and the Elk,
Wahsatch, Uinta, and innumerable spurs streaked with streams, made famous by
early explorers and hunters. It is a river of rivers - the Du Chesne, San
Rafael, Yampa, Dolores, Gunnison, Cochetopa, Uncompahgre, Eagle, and Roaring
Rivers, the Green and the Grand, and scores of others with branches
innumerable, as mad and glad a band as ever sang on mountains, descending in
glory of foam and spray from snow-banks and glaciers through their rocky
moraine-dammed, beaver-dammed channels. Then, all emerging from dark balsam
and pine woods and coming together, they meander through wide, sunny park
valleys, and at length enter the great plateau and flow in deep canons, the
beginning of the system culminating in this grand caņon of canons.
Our warm caņon camp is also a
good place to give a thought to the glaciers which still exist at the heads
of the highest tributaries. Some of them are of considerable size,
especially those on the Wind River and Sawatch ranges in Wyoming and
Colorado. They are remnants of a vast system of glaciers which recently
covered the upper part of the Colorado basin, sculptured its peaks, ridges,
and valleys to their present forms, and extended far out over the plateau
region -how far I cannot now say. It appears, therefore, that, however old
the main trunk of the Colorado may be, all its widespread upper branches and
the landscapes they flow through are new-born, scarce at all changed as yet
in any important feature since they first came to light at the close of the
Glacial Period.
The so-called Grand Colorado
Plateau, of which the Grand Caņon is only one of the well- proportioned
features, extends with a breadth of hundreds of miles from the flanks of the
Wahsatch and Park Mountains to the south of the San Francisco Peaks.
Immediately to the north of the deepest part of the caņon it rises in a
series of subordinate plateaus, diversified with green meadows, marshes,
bogs, ponds, forests, and grovy park valleys, a favorite Indian
hunting-ground, inhabited by elk, deer, beaver, etc. But far the greater
part of the plateau is good sound desert, rocky, sandy, or fluffy with loose
ashes and dust, dissected in some places into a labyrinth of stream-channel
chasms like cracks in a dry clay-bed, or the narrow slit crevasses of
glaciers - blackened with lava-flows, dotted with volcanoes and beautiful
buttes, and lined with long continuous escarpments - a vast bed of sediments
of an ancient sea-bottom, still nearly as level as when first laid down
after being heaved into the sky a mile or two high.
Walking quietly about in the
alleys and byways of the Grand Caņon city, we learn something of the way it
was made; and all must admire effects so great from means apparently so
simple; rain striking light hammer-blows or heavier in streams, with many
rest Sundays; soft air and light, gentle sappers and miners, toiling
forever; the big river sawing the plateau asunder, carrying away the eroded
and ground waste, and exposing the edges of the strata to the weather; rain
torrents sawing cross-streets and alleys, exposing the strata in the same
way in hundreds of sections, the softer, less resisting beds weathering and
receding faster, thus undermining the harder beds, which fall, not only in
small weathered particles, but in heavy sheer-cleaving masses, assisted down
from time to time by kindly earthquakes, rain torrents rushing the fallen
material to the river, keeping the wall rocks constantly exposed. Thus the
can-on grows wider and deeper. So also do the side-canons and amphitheaters,
while secondary gorges and cirques gradually isolate masses of the
promontories, forming new buildings, all of which are being weathered and
pulled and shaken down while being built, showing destruction and creation
as one. We see the proudest temples and palaces in stateliest attitudes,
wearing their sheets of detritus as royal robes, shedding off showers of red
and yellow stones like trees in autumn shedding their leaves, going to dust
like beautiful days to night, proclaiming as with the tongues of angels the
natural beauty of death.
Every building is seen to be
a remnant of once continuous beds of sediments, - sand and slime on the
floor of an ancient sea, and filled with the remains of animals, - and every
particle of the sandstones and limestones of these wonderful structures to
be derived from other landscapes, weathered and rolled and ground in the
storms and streams of other ages. And when we examine the escarpments,
hills, buttes, and other monumental masses of the plateau on either side of
the caņon, we discover that an amount of material has been carried off in
the general denudation of the region compared with which even that carried
away in the making of the Grand Caņon is as nothing. Thus each wonder in
sight becomes a window through which other wonders come to view. In no other
part of this continent are the wonders of geology, the records of the
world's auld lang syne, more widely opened, or displayed in higher piles.
The whole caņon is a mine of fossils, in which five thousand feet of
horizontal strata are exposed in regular succession over more than a
thousand square miles of wall-space, and on the adjacent plateau region
there is another series of beds twice as thick, forming a grand geological
library -a collection of stone books covering thousands of miles of
shelving, tier on tier, conveniently arranged for the student. And with what
wonderful scriptures are their pages filled - myriad forms of successive
floras and faunas, lavishly illustrated with colored drawings, carrying us
back into the midst of the life of a past infinitely remote. And as we go on
and on, studying this old, old life in the light of the life beating warmly
about us, we enrich and lengthen our own. |
