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 Canyon.
When I first heard of the Santa Fe trains running to the edge of the
Grand Canyon 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 canyons, 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 canyon 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 canyons like or unlike it, with the common result of worse
confounding confusion. The prudent keep silence. It was once said
that the "Grand Canyon could put a dozen Yosemites in its vest
pocket."
The justly famous Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is, like the
Colorado, gorgeously colored and abruptly countersunk in a plateau,
and both are mainly the work of water.
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