The Grand Cañon of the Colorado | Page 5

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 Cañon 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 cañon 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

halleluiahs.
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 cañon like a sea.
Still deeper, richer, more divine grow the great walls and temples, until
in the supreme flaming glory of sunset the whole cañon 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 cañon 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 cañon, 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
Cañon work is done. Most of the fertile summer clouds of the cañon are
of this sort, massive, swelling cumuli, growing rapidly, displaying
delicious tones of purple and gray in the hollows of their sun-beaten

bosses, showering