The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It

Chapter I. the Grand Canyon of Arizona

Only One Grand Canyon. The ancient world had its seven wonders, but they were all the work of man. The modern world of the United States has easily its seven wonders--Niagara, the Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Natural Bridge, the Mammoth Cave, the Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon of Arizona--but they are all the work of God. It is hard, in studying the seven wonders of the ancients, to decide which is the most wonderful, but now that the Canyon is known all men unite in affirming that the greatest of all wonders, ancient or modern, is the Grand Canyon of Arizona. Some men say there are several Grand Canyons, but to the one who knows there is but one Grand Canyon. The use of the word to name any lesser gorge is a sacrilege as well as a misnomer.

Not in the spirit of carping criticism or of reckless boasting are these words uttered. It is the dictum of sober truth. It is wrong to even unintentionally mislead a whole people by the misuse of names. Until made fully aware of the facts, the traveling world are liable to error. They want to see the Grand Canyon. They are shown these inferior gorges, each called the Grand Canyon, and, because they do not know, they accept the half-truth. The other canyons they see are great enough in themselves to claim their closest study, and worthy to have distinctive names bestowed upon them. But, as Clarence Dutton, the eminent geologist, has well said in his important scientific monograph written for the United States Geological Survey: "The name Grand Canyon repeatedly has been infringed for purposes of advertisement. The Canyon of the Yellowstone has been called 'The Grand Canyon.' A more flagrant piracy is the naming of the gorge of the Arkansas River 'The Grand Canyon of Colorado,' and many persons who have visited it have been persuaded that they have seen the great chasm. These river valleys are certainly very pleasing and picturesque, but there is no more comparison between them and the mighty chasm of the Colorado River than there is between the Alleghanies and the Himalayas.

Sublimity of the Grand Canyon. "Those who have long and carefully studied the Grand Canyon of the Colorado do not hesitate for a moment to pronounce it by far the most sublime of all earthly spectacles. If its sublimity consisted only in its dimensions, it could be set forth in a single sentence. It is more than two hundred miles long, from five to twelve miles wide, and from five thousand to six thousand feet deep. There are in the world valleys which are longer and a few which are deeper. There are valleys flanked by summits loftier than the palisades of the Kaibab. Still the Grand Canyon is the sublimest thing on earth. It is so not alone by virtue of its magnitudes, but by virtue of the whole its tout ensemble."

What, then, is this Grand Canyon, for which its friends dare to make so large and bold a claim?

It is a portion--a very small portion--of the waterway of the Colorado River, and it is so named to differentiate it from the other canyons of the same river. The canyon system of the Colorado River is as vast in its extent as is the Grand Canyon in its quality of sublimity. For it consists of such a maze of canyons--the main canyons through which the river itself runs; the canyons through which its tributaries run; the numberless canyons tributary to the tributary canyons; the canyons within canyons, that, upon the word of no less an authority than Major Powell, I assert that if these canyons were placed end for end in a straight line they would reach over twenty thousand miles! Is it possible for the human mind to conceive a canyon system so vast that, if it were so placed, it would nearly belt the habitable globe?

Impression on Beholders. And the principal member of this great system has been named The Grand Canyon, as a conscious and meaningful tribute to its vastness, its sublimity, its grandeur and its awesomeness. It is unique; it stands alone. Though only two hundred and seventeen miles long, it expresses within that distance more than any one human mind yet has been able to comprehend or interpret to the world. Famous word-masters have attempted it, great canvas and colormasters have tried it, but all alike have failed. It is one of the few things that man is utterly unable to imagine until he comes in actual contact with it. A strange being, a strange flower, an unknown reptile, a unique machine, or a strange and unknown anything, almost, within the ken of man, can be explained to another so that he will reasonably comprehend it; but not so with the Grand Canyon. I had an illustration of this but a few days ago. A member of my own household, keenly intelligent and well-read, who had heard my own descriptions a thousand and one times, and had seen photographs and paintings, without number, of the Canyon, came with me on her first visit to the camp where I am now writing. As the carriage approached the rim at Hotouta Amphitheatre and gave her the first glimpse of the Canyon, she drew back terrified, appalled, horror-stricken. Subsequent analysis of her emotions and the results of that first glimpse revealed a state of mind so overpowered with the sublimity, vastness, depth and power of the scene, that her impressions were totally inadequate, altogether lacking in detail and accuracy, and at complete variance with her habitual observations.

Whence came so utter a confusion of the senses? The Canyon is its own answer. It fills the soul of all responsive persons with awe. Explain it as one will, deny it if one will, sensitive souls are filled with awe at its superb majesty, its splendor, its incomprehensible sublimity. And in these factors we find the great source of its attractiveness, for, in spite of the awe and terror it inspires in the hearts of so many at first sight, it allures, attracts and holds those who have once gazed into its mysterious depths. Indeed, is it not to its very vastness, mystery, solitude and awe-inspiring qualities we owe its power over us? The human mind is so constituted that such qualities generally appeal to it. Hence the never-ceasing call the Canyon will make to the soul of man, so long as a susceptible mortal remains on earth.

Its Physical Features. Seen at any time it is bewildering and appalling to one's untrained senses; but especially in the very early morning, during the hours of dawn and the slow ascent of the sun, and equally in the very late afternoon and at sunset, are its most entrancing effects to be witnessed. At midday, with the sun glaring through into its depths, the reds and chocolates of the sandstones (which are the predominating colors) are so strong, and the relieving shadows so few, that it seems uninteresting. But let one watch it as I did last night, between the hours of seven and ten, and again this morning from five until eight of the clock. What revelations of forms, what richness of colors; what transformations of apparently featureless walls into angles and arches and recesses and facets and entablatures and friezes and facades. What lighting up of towers and temples and buttes and minarets and pinnacles and ridges and peaks and pillars of erosion! What exposures of detached and isolated mountains of rock, of accompanying gorges and ravines, deep, forbidding, black and unknown, the depths of which the foot of man has never trod! Turner never depicted such dazzling scenes, Rembrandt such violent and yet attractive contrasts. Here everything is massive and dominating. The colors are vivid; the shadows are purple to blackness; the heights are towering; the depths are appalling; the sheer walls are as if poised in mid-air; the towers and temples dwarf into insignificance even the monster works of man on the Nile. Here are single mountains of erosion standing as simple features of the vast sight spread out for miles before you, that are as high as the highest mountains of the Eastern States. A score of Mt. Washingtons find repose in the depths of this incomprehensible waterway, in the two hundred and seventeen miles of its length. In width it varies from ten to twenty miles, and at the point where I now sit writing, where the Canyon makes a double bow-knot in a marvelous bend, the north wall (which, in the sharp bend of the river, becomes the south wall of the reverse of the curve) is completely broken down, so that one has a clear and direct view across two widths of canyon and river to a distance of from thirty-five to forty miles. Who can really "take in" such a view? I have gazed upon the Canyon at this spot almost yearly, and often daily for weeks at a time, for about twenty years, yet such is the marvelousness of distance, that never until two days ago did I discover that a giant detached mountain, fully eight thousand feet high, and with a base ten miles square, which I had photographed from another angle on the north side of the Canyon, stood in the direct line of my sight and, as it were, immediately before me. The discovery was made by a peculiar falling of light and shadow. The heavens were filled with clouds which threw complete shadows on the far north wall. The sun happened to shine through the clouds and light up the whole contour of this Steamboat Mountain (so called because of its shape), so that it stood forth clearly outlined against the dark field behind. In surprise I called to my companion and showed her my discovery. Yet, such is the deceptiveness of distance that, to the unaided eye, and without being aware of the fact, even my observant faculties had never before perceived that this gigantic mass was not a portion of the great north wall, from which it is detached by a canyon fully eight miles wide.

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