Other Valleys Of Erosion Are As Great - In All Their
Dimensions Some Are Greater - But None Of These Produces An Effect On
The Imagination At Once So Quick And Profound, Coming Without Study,
Given At A Glance.
Therefore by far the greatest and most influential
feature of this view from Bright Angel or any other of the canyon
views is the opposite wall.
Of the one beneath our feet we see only
fragmentary sections in cirques and amphitheaters and on the sides of
the out-jutting promontories between them, while the other, though far
distant, is beheld in all its glory of color and noble proportions - the one supreme beauty and wonder to which the eye is ever turning.
For while charming with its beauty it tells the story of the
stupendous erosion of the canyon - the foundation of the unspeakable
impression made on everybody. It seems a gigantic statement for even
nature to make, all in one mighty stone word, apprehended at once like
a burst of light, celestial color its natural vesture, coming in glory
to mind and heart as to a home prepared for it from the very
beginning. Wildness so godful, cosmic, primeval, bestows a new sense
of earth's beauty and size. Not even from high mountains does the
world seem so wide, so like a star in glory of light on its way
through the heavens.
I have observed scenery-hunters of all sorts getting first views of
yosemites, glaciers, White Mountain ranges, etc. Mixed with the
enthusiasm which such scenery naturally excites, there is often weak
gushing, and many splutter aloud like little waterfalls. Here, for a
few moments at least, there is silence, and all are in dead earnest,
as if awed and hushed by an earthquake - perhaps until the cook cries
"Breakfast!" or the stable-boy "Horses are ready!" Then the poor
unfortunates, slaves of regular habits, turn quickly away, gasping and
muttering as if wondering where they had been and what had enchanted
them.
Roads have been made from Bright Angel Hotel through the Coconino
Forest to the ends of outstanding promontories, commanding extensive
views up and down the canyon. The nearest of them, three or four
miles east and west, are O'Neill's Point and Rowe's Point; the latter,
besides commanding the eternally interesting canyon, gives wide-sweeping views southeast and west over the dark forest roof to the San
Francisco and Mount Trumbull volcanoes - the bluest of mountains over
the blackest of level woods.
Instead of thus riding in dust with the crowd, more will be gained by
going quietly afoot along the rim at different times of day and night,
free to observe the vegetation, the fossils in the rocks, the seams
beneath overhanging ledges once inhabited by Indians, and to watch the
stupendous scenery in the changing lights and shadows, clouds,
showers, and storms. One need not go hunting the so-called "points of
interest." The verge anywhere, everywhere, is a point of interest
beyond one's wildest dreams.
As yet, few of the promontories or throng of mountain buildings in the
canyon are named. Nor among such exuberance of forms are names
thought of by the bewildered, hurried tourist. He would be as likely
to think of names for waves in a storm. The Eastern and Western
Cloisters, Hindu Amphitheater, Cape Royal, Powell's Plateau, Grand
View Point, Point Sublime, Bissell and Moran Points, the Temple of
Set, Vishnu's Temple, Shiva's Temple, Twin Temples, Tower of Babel,
Hance's Column - these fairly good names given by Dutton, Holmes,
Moran, and others are scattered over a large stretch of the canyon
wilderness.
All the canyon rock-beds are lavishly painted, except a few neutral
bars and the granite notch at the bottom occupied by the river, which
makes but little sign. It is a vast wilderness of rocks in a sea of
light, colored and glowing like oak and maple woods in autumn, when
the sun-gold is richest. I have just said that it is impossible to
learn what the canyon is like from descriptions and pictures.
Powell's and Dutton's descriptions present magnificent views not only
of the canyon but of all the grand region round about it; and Holmes's
drawings, accompanying Dutton's report, are wonderfully good. Surely
faithful and loving skill can go no farther in putting the
multitudinous decorated 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 Canyon 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 canyon 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!
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