The Grand Canyon of Arizona | Page 6

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.
No one can know the Grand Canyon, in all its phases. It is one of those sights that words cannot exaggerate. What does it matter how deep you say--in hundreds or thousands of feet--the Canyon is, when you cannot see to the bottom of it? Strict literalists may stick out for the exact figures in feet and inches from rim to river--elsewhere given as the scientists of the United States Geological Survey have recorded them--but to me they are almost valueless. Its depth is beyond human comprehension in figures, and so is its width. And the eye of the best trained man in the world cannot grasp all its features of wall and butte and canyon, of winding ridge and curving ravine, of fell precipice and rocky gorge, in a week, a month, a year, or a lifetime. Hence words can but suggest; nothing can describe the indescribable; nothing can picture what no man ever has seen in its completeness.
What Men Have Said of the Canyon. Men have stood before it and called it "an inferno, swathed in soft celestial fires;" but what is an inferno? And who ever saw the fires of heaven? Words! words! words! Charles Dudley Warner, versed in much and diverse world-scenery, mountain-sculpture, canyon-carvings, and plain-sweep, confessed: "I experienced for a moment an indescribable terror of nature, a confusion of mind, a fear to be alone in such a presence. With all its grotesqueness and majesty of form and radiance of color, creation seemed in a whirl." When the reader thinks of grotesqueness, what images come to his mind? A Chinese joss, perhaps; a funny human face on the profile of a rock, but nothing so vast, so awful, so large as this. The word "majesty" suggests a kingly presence, a large man of dignified mien, or a sequoia standing supreme over all other trees in the forest. But a thousand men of majesty could be placed unseen in one tiny rift in this gorge, and all the sequoias of the world could be planted in one stretch of this Canyon, and never be noticed by the most careful watcher on the rim.
Another, reaching the Canyon at night, declared that she and her companions seemed to be "standing in midair, while below, the dark depths were lost in blackness and mystery." Again mere words! words! For whoever stood in mid-air?
Still another calls it "the most ineffable thing that exists within the range of man," and later explains when he