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 hears 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 canyon
like a sea. Still deeper, richer, more divine grow the great walls
and temples, until in the supreme flaming glory of sunset the whole
canyon 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 canyon 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 canyon,
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 Canyon work is done.
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