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UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD
JSew York and London
487
Copyright,
By UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD
New York and London
[Entered at Stationers' Hall]
Stereographs copyrighted in the United States
and foreign countries
MAP SYSTEM
Patented in the United States, August 21, xooo
Patented in Great Britain, March 22, 1900
Patented in France, March 26, 1900. S. G. D. G
Switzerland, X Patent Nr. 21,211
Patents applied for in other countries
All rights reservtd
Printed in th, United States
PAGE
Looking through the Stereographs 5
How the Cafion came to be 11
How the Cafion was explored 18
Books to read 29
Methods . 30
SEEING THE
1 A wonder to the primitive inhabitants Santa Fe
train crossing Canon Diablo 32
2 From Red to San Francisco Mountains a woody
wilderness in sun-kissed Arizona 33
3 Blown asunder by volcanic energies Red Mountain,
an extinct volcano 35
4 Labyrinthine ways through the lava-ash formations,
Red Mountain crater 37
5 "The sinuous Colorado, yellow as the Tiber," north
from Bissell's Point 38
6 Among the the buttes, Red Cafion trail 40
7 Fathoming the Depth of a vanished sea Grand
Cafion from Hance's Cove 42
8 Descending Grand View trail 44
9 Dendritic stalagmites in a limestone cave 47
10 Angels' Gateway and Newberry Terrace fromCot-
tonwood Spring 48
11 Beside the Colorado, looking up to Zoroaster Tower
from Pipe Creek , 51
12 Down the Granite gorge of the Colorado (1200 feet
deep) from Pyrites Point 53
13 Prospecting for gold Indian Garden Creek 54
14 Rounding " Cape Horn " on the Bright Angel trail. . 56
15 Thomas Moran, America's greatest scenic artist,
sketching at Bright Angel Cove 57
16 "Over all broods a solem silence "Sunset at
O'Neill's Point. . . 59
17 Overlooking nature's greatest amphitheatre from
Rowe's Point, N. W 60
18 On the brink, one mile above the river N. W. from
Rowe's Point 02
LOOKING THROUGH STEREO-
GRAPHS
Stereoscopic photographs or stereo-
graphs are not just " little pictures."
When a stereograph is held in the hand
and looked at with the unaided eye it
seems to the inexperienced observer like
a pair of photographs just alike, mounted
side by side on one card. The fact is that
the two parts are not alike the negatives
were taken at the same instant, but with
two different lenses, set side by side in
the camera about as far apart as a man's
two eyes.
Now a man's two eyes do not give him
exactly duplicate reports in regard to any
solid object at which he looks. You can
easily prove this for yourself. Stretch
out your own right arm at full length
exactly in front of you, so that the out-
spread hand is seen edge-wise opposite
your face. Close the left eye and look
only with the right ; you see the edge of
your hand and a bit around on the back
of your hand. Keep the position un-
changed, but close the right eye and look
only with the left; this time you see the
edge and a part of the palm. Now look
6 The Grand Canon
with both eyes at once. You will see with
the right eye a part of the right side, with
the left a part of the left side ; the result
is that you will practically see part way
around the hand, and that is what makes
it look solid rather than flat or like a
mere shadow on paper.
Stereoscopic photography is based on
this principle of two-eye vision. One lens
of the stereoscopic camera takes in just
what a man's right eye would see if he
occupied the camera's place. The other
lens takes in exactly what the man's left
eye would see at the same instant. When
the two resulting prints are placed before
the oblique-set lenses of the stereoscope,
the impressions they give are combined
into one. You see everything standing
out solid with space around it, exactly as
you would see it if you were bodily pres-
ent on the spot, lacking only the element
of color.
Try one more experiment to see how
much difference there is between an ordi-
nary " picture," such as can be taken with
one lens and seen with one eye, and a
stereograph of the same place. Find No.
17 in this series " Overlooking Na-
ture's greatest amphitheatre." Cover
one side with your hand or with this
book, and look at the other side, not
using the stereoscope. It is interesting
of Arizona 7
yes, that scenery must be grand, so
you say. Now place the stereograph in
the rack, adjust it at the proper distance
for your eyes and look at it through
the stereoscopic lenses. Does it not make
you almost draw back with a shock of
surprise? You feel the dizzy space be-
low that perilously overhanging shelf,
from which the men are looking off;
you almost hold your breath as you peer
down towards the invisible bottom of
the gorge.
The difference between a mere pic-
ture and a stereograph is probably clear
to you now.
It seems to some people too wonderful
for belief that stereographs should give
them the impression of everything in the
full size of the actual, existing world, yet
this also is true. Look out from your
own window, six or eight feet distant,
at a man in the street forty feet away;
how much space on the window-glass is
actually occupied by his figure ? Only a
fraction of an inch ! A visiting card held
in your own hand at arm's length might
easily cover him from sight. That same
small card might cover a tall building,
or even hide a distant mountain, for a
small thing near the eyes naturally fills
the same space as a much larger thing
farther away. This fact of optics has
8 The. Grand Canon
also to do with the service rendered
by stereographs, for the stereoscopic
prints, when viewed through the oblique,
set lenses of the stereoscope, become like
so many windows through which you can
see the real things, full size, off at the
distance where they actually were in fact,
when confronted by the sensitized plates
of the camera.
The mechanical construction of the
stereoscope in itself helps one to see
everything in full size with the effect of
real presence on the spot. The hood which
fits against the forehead, shutting off as
it does all sight of the things directly
surrounding you as you sit in your own
chair, makes it much easier for you to
forget that chair and the floor and the
walls of your room to think only of the
other place at which you are looking, and
to feel yourself actually there on the spot.
But in order to have a thoroughly satis-
factory sense of location on the spot you
must know where " there " is ; lacking
such knowledge you still remain in the
helpless condition of a man who has been
carried somewhere blindfolded or asleep
and who opens his eyes on a place
whose identity is unknown. To meet the
need in this line you will find the special,
patent maps included in this pamphlet
quite invaluable. Do not fail to study
/
of Arizona 9
the maps; it will repay you tenfold for
the slight exertion. The encircled figures
in red show exactly where you are stand-
ing in each case. The red lines diverging
V fashion from these points show in
what direction you are looking.
You will find it well worth all the
trouble it costs to pause at each stand-
point and think definitely just where you
are and not only what is before you, but
also (wherever possible) what is behind
you, and what lies off at your left and
your right beyond the limits of your act-
ual vision. This aids immensely if you
want really to enter into the spirit of the
place in question. If you take pains to
do all this, you can certainly obtain a con-
siderable measure of the very same feel--
ings that you would have if you were
bodily on the spot the difference will be
only as to the degree and intensity of feel-
ing, not in regard to the kind of feeling.
Do not hurry. Tourists often lose half
the meaning and half the pleasure of a
journey because of their nervous way of
scampering from one sight to another
without stopping to think about what they
see. To some extent this mistake can
hardly be avoided when stages and trains
start at certain moments and excursion
tickets have limited dates. But when you
are looking at the country through stere-
10 The Grand Canon of Arizona
ographs, you can take your time about it.
You can linger long enough in any one
spot so that the beauty and the meaning
of what you see may be mentally digested.
Best of all, you can keep going over and
over again to any place which makes a
particularly strong appeal to you ; you can
gradually grow as familiar with it as if
it were close by your home.
HOW THE CANON CAME TO BE
A full account of the geologic history
of the Canon would fill several bulky vol-
umes, but this is the story in brief.
Ages upon ages ago, before the cooling
crust that makes the earth's surface was
nearly as thick as it is now, a portion of
it, including northern Arizona, did not
stand at this present high level ; it was
lower by several thousand feet, so low
in fact, that the waters of the sea had
found and filled its deep hollow. For
ages and ages the bare lands around it
were subjected to the wear and tear of
primeval storms and floods, and nameless
rivers bore their waste down to this part
of the sea in the form of sand and gravel.
Through immeasurably long periods the
old ocean-bed kept accumulating layer
after layer of sediment so deposited.
Then, after a time, some disturbance
within the fiery interior of the earth led
to a change in this part of its surface,
pushing it outward i.e. upward and
transforming the one time ocean-bed into
dry land. The effect of the enormous
weight of the superimposed masses of
sediment, combined with the effect of
12 The Grand Canon
heat from below, had compacted and
hardened the ancient layers of ocean mud
and transformed them into solid strata of
rock. When these rock - strata were
pushed up by volcanic forces from the
interior, some of them were broken apart
and tilted into other than horizontal posi-
tions. So exposed and, in parts, so
broken, the stratified rocks took their turn
at being weathered and worn away by
river currents that tore along over them.
Still later (there is ample ocular evi-
dence for all this in the geologist's eyes),
some further seismic disturbance caused
all this region to settle again, sinking once
more below ocean-level and becoming re-
flooded by prehistoric seas. Again it lay
below the waters, receiving tribute of
sedimentary deposits, this time not merely
of inorganic rock-waste, but also of soil,
for land vegetation was flourishing
rankly under new climatic conditions.
And yet all this was but a preliminary
part of the experience of this portion of
the earth's surface.
A second time this part of the still
yielding crust was readjusted as the result
of interior pressure, being pushed up and
out till its bulging brought it again above
the sea-level, and it played for a second
time the role of dry land. When it thus
rose again, its latest acquisitions in the
of Arizona 13
4
form of sedimentary linings had become
compressed and hardened into stratified
rock, just as was the case with the earlier
deposits, thougjh the materal compressed
was distinctly different in character.
A huge inland sea above spilled over
during these changes of level. Its waters,
hurrying down to the main ocean, wore
a channel in the rock-surfaces over
which they flowed. The corrasive floods,
loaded with sharp fragments of gravelly
sediment, were great and strong ; they cut
their way deeper and deeper as they were
pushed to their work by other floods that
crowded fast upon them from behind. All
this time while the pouring, tearing, rag-
ing outlet of the inland sea was wearing
gorges through the rocks, the plateau as
a whole was rising, ahd the corrading
stream, acquiring still greater momen-
tum and cutting power, sawed away at the
rocks that steadily rose against its blade.
It cut deeper and deeper and deeper,
while the forces of erosion attacked
the side walls. Century after century, the
cutting went on; sometimes the upward
push of the rocky surface lessened for
a while ; again it increased. Now and
again the down-pouring river met with
more resistance in some section of its
banks of stone, and particularly stubborn
cores of ancient rock were left only par-
14 The Grand Canon
tially cut away, the river not having had
quite time enough to conquer them before
its watery ammunition began to fail.
Those obstinate remnants, all cut and
carved by the long continued persistence
of the waters are what are known to-day
as buttes, projecting from the jagged
walls of the ancient gorge.
During the great glacial period the
general topography of this region must
have been approximately the same as
now, and the floods fed by the melting
ice fields of the mountain tops must have
kept this huge river-bed full of roaring
waters. Tributary streams having their
chief development during the ice age, are
credited with much of the carving of the
side canons ; certainly there is not now a
volume of water commensurate with the
present magnitude of their sculptured
gorges, though time is long and erosion
unceasing.
Dellenbaugh* says : " The Grand Can-
yon may be likened to an inverted moun-
tain range. Imagine a great mountain
chain cast upside down in plaster. Then
all the former edges and spurs of the
range become tributary canyons and
gulches running back twenty or thirty
miles into the surrounding country,
* F. S. Dellenbaugh : Romance of the Colorado
River, p. 40.
of Arizona 15
growing shallower and shallower as the
distance increases from the central core,
just as the great spurs and ridges of a
mountain range, descending, melt finally
into the plain."
The inland sea whose outlet probably
began the stupendous gorges of this river
is no longer in existence. The vast north-
ern ice-fields, whose melting deepened it
with their summer freshets, are a thing of
the far-distant past. Only the melting
snows and pouring rains of the Rocky
Mountain region between here and Yel-
lowstone Park now contribute to the
stream whose far-back ancestors did such
mighty execution. The Colorado River
of to-day, the marriage of the Green and
the Grand, is, however, no ignoble
stream. Fremont's Peak, where the
Green River begins, stands 13,790 feet
above sea-level ; the river flows two thou-
sand miles, from the Wind River moun-
tains in northwestern Wyoming to the
Gulf of California; and it drains an area
equal to that of Minnesota, Wisconsin,
Illinois, Iowa and Missouri. Here in the
Canon it is from one to five or six hun-
dred feet wide; its current is of terrific
swiftness and great depth; yet, with all
its noble dimensions, it is only a playful
infant in comparison with the ancestral
floods that tore out this stupendous chasm
16 The Grand Canon
on their stern and ferocious progress
down to the Peaceful Sea!
The great width of the outer canon
from rim to rim (in several places twelve
to fourteen miles) is, of course, due in
part to the action of rain, frost and wind
(the forces of erosion), as well as to the
work of running water (the force of cor-
rasion). In some places currents of
water wore away softer strata low down
in the bounding walls, and in the course
of time so under-cut the more obstinate
tipper strata that the latter were dragged
down by their own weight, tearing huge
sections out of the walls and thus widen-
ing the river bed as a whole.
Figures taken by themselves mean
little, but kept in mind when one is see-
ing the facts, mean a great deal.
Where the Little Colorado enters, some
fifteen miles above Bissell's Point, the
present bed of the stream is 2,690 feet
above sea-level. Through the granite
gorge below Hance's Point and the Grand
View Trail, it lowers rapidly, in one
stretch of ten miles falling 210 feet. At
the junction of the Kanab, below the best
known part of the Canon, the river bed
is only 1,800 feet above the sea, i.e., it
falls 890 feet during its journey from the
Little Colorado to the Kanab. The aver-
age depth of the entire gorge is over 4,000
of Arizona 17
feet; at Hance's Cove and several other
points the actual vertical depth reaches
nearly 6,000 feet ; the cut of the river be-
low Hance's Cove lays bare successive
strata of rock representing successively
older and older geologic ages, and goes
down through all those enwrapping lay-
ers of the earth's surface to the inner core
of the globe metamorphic rock, the pri-
meval stuff of the world.
C. E. Dutton,* author of the chief Gov-
ernment documents regarding the geol-
ogy of the Canon, enumerates the rock-
strata laid bare beginning at the rim
as follows :
1. Cherty limestone, 240 feet.
2. Upper Aubrey limestone, 320 feet.
3. Cross-bedded sandstone, 380 feet.
4. Lower Aubrey sandstone, 950 feet.
5. Upper red-wall sandstone, 400 feet.
6. Red-wall limestone, 1,500 feet.
7. Lower carboniferous sandstone, 550
feet.
8. Quartzite base of Carboniferous,
1 80 feet.
9. Archaean.
* C. E. Dtitton : Tertiary History of the Grand
Canyon District.
The Physical Geology of the Grand Canyon
District.
HOW THE CANON WAS EXPLORED
In comparison with the long ages
which it took to make the Canon, men's
acquaintance with it is all very brief ; and
yet even that began longer ago than his-
tory can reach. In a gulch a little way
above Bright Angel Creek there are ruins
of stone houses, built evidently by Indians,
akin to those who now build similar
homes over on the mesas of the Painted
Desert in the northeastern part of the
State. At Moran Point there are remains
of curious old stone dwellings, evidently
the abandoned homes of a similar tribe.
Remains of the same kind exist in various
parts of the bottom of the Grand Canon,
and may be discovered along the north-
ern rim and in the side canons. They
are also found in all the other canons of
the Colorado, above. Down in the deep
gorge of Havasupai Creek, a tributary of
the Grand Canon, eleven miles at the
west, the Havasupais live to-day. It is
difficult to assign any definite date to the
abandoned stone houses down inside the
canon, but it seems probable that the
Indians went to live in such nearly in-
accessible spots chiefly as a means of
The Grand Canon of Arizona 19
self-protection against enemies. Their
migration here may have been caused by
inter-tribal feuds, or it may have been
partly a consequence of northward move-
ments on the part of the Spanish con-
querors of southern and central Mexico.
(All this region, it will be remembered,
was until 1848 a part of Mexico.) About
1530 it is certain that the Spanish had
been told great tales about the existence
of rich towns somewhere up here full of
treasures worth capture. It was in 1540
that an exploring party, under Coronado,
sent by the Spanish viceroy Mendoza,
reached certain Indian villages about
twenty days' journey from here, and the
natives took them to see what the Span-
ish captain, Cardenas,* afterwards de-
scribed as a marvellous river-gorge. The
accounts of the journey are so meagre
and vague that it is impossible to be sure
just where the Spaniards got their first
sight of the world's wonder ; some
authorities think it was not far from the
head of the present Bright Angel Trail
(see stereograph 15) ; some think it must
have been considerably farther down-
river^ When the expedition went back
* George Parker Winship : The Journey of Cor-
onado p. 35.
f F. S. Dellenbaugh : The Romance of the
Colorado River, Ch. II.
20 The Grand Canon
to Mexico, it was reported that a river
had been seen with banks three or four
leagues apart, and with queerly shaped
buttes in the bank taller than the great
tower of Seville ; a river with walls so
deep that the current, half a league wide,
looked like a mere brook in the distance
below. It was a marvellous story and,
no doubt, found ready listeners; but the
Spaniards were more interested in gold
and silver than in scenery, and they
allowed the travellers' tale to die into
mere tradition, interesting enough, but tc
them not especially worth while.
The next white people to see the canon
were some of the Franciscan priests who
came out in the wilderness from Mexico,
to find where the Indians lived between
the Rio Grande settlements and in Cali-
fornia, and to bring them the message of
the Christian religion. In 1776, Father
Garces visited the Havasupais and
then went on across the desert plateau
south of the Grand Canon, climbed down
and up the steeps of the canon of the
Little Colorado and went off northeast
across the Painted Desert to Oraibi.
He did not get a good look into the
depths of the larger canon, but he did
record in his diary of the Little Colorado :
" The bed of this river as far as the con-
fluence is a trough of solid rock, very
of Arizona 21
profound, and wide about a stone's
throw."
Later in the same year another
Franciscan father named Escalante en-
deavored to explore a route to the Mis-
sion of Monterey from Santa Fe. He
led his party north, almost to the shore
of Salt Lake, then turned southwest
about as far as the present town of St.
George. Fearing Monterey could not be
reached before winter set in, he turned
east and attempted to cross the Colorado.
The grandeur of the gorges in that part
of the river was tragic for the Padre's
expedition; twelve days they wandered
along the edges of giant cliffs, painfully
crawling down and wearily dragging
themselves up again till their provisions
were exhausted and they were forced to
eat some of their worn-out horses. They
succeeded finally in crossing about thirty-
five miles above Lee Ferry as the river
runs about fourteen in a straight line.
After the famous Lewis-and-Clark ex-
pedition from St. Louis to the mouth of
the Columbia in 1804-6, hunters and
trappers began to push out into the
wilderness in this direction. In 1826, a
party of trappers under a leader named
Pattie came across-country from the Gila
River, reached the Grand Canon at its
foot, and followed along near the rim for
22 The Grand Canon
a considerable distance. Pattie after-
wards wrote an account of the journey,
giving his impressions of the river-rim
"as " horrid mountains which so cage it
up as to deprive all human beings of the
ability to descend its banks and make use
of its waters. No mortal has the power,"
so he said, " of describing the pleasure
I felt when I could once more reach the
banks of the river."
In Fremont's time, when much of the
West was scientifically examined, the
Grand Canon was still known only by
hazy and terrifying report. Three parties
had, indeed, attempted to descend the
upper river in boats, but their expeditions
met with disaster. Fremont himself,
with all his daring, was satisfied merely
to look at some of the upper canons
(above the confluence of the Yampa)
from the rim, and reported " the country
below is said to assume a very rugged
character, the river and its affluents pass-
ing through canons which forbid all ac-
cess to the water."
It was not until 1869 that white men
actually passed through the fearful deeps
of the Grand Canon and lived to tell the
tale. Major John W. Powell, a veteran of
the Civil War, organized and successfully
carried through the first serious scien-
tific attempt to explore the awful
of Arizona 23
gorge on the river-waters.* He had four
boats specially built for the expedition,
each planned with water-tight compart-
ments and, while as strong as possible,
light enough to be carried by four men.
Ten men made up his party. They took
with them provisions for ten months, but
expected to be absent much longer, in-
tending to add to this stock by killing
game along the way. Clothing, ammuni-
tion, tools and a good equipment of in-
struments for making scientific observa-
tions, sextants, compasses, barometers,
thermometers, etc., were also carried.
The cargo was carefully divided between
the boats in such a way that no essential
item would be entirely lost if any par-
ticular boat should be wrecked.
Funds for the expedition were fur-
nished by the Illinois Industrial Uni-
versity and the Chicago Academy of
Sciences. The boats started from the
little station of the Union Pacific Rail-
road where the tracks cross Green River.
An old Indian told them of the expe-
rience of one of his tribe in attempting to
pass through one of the canons in a
canoe : " Rocks h-e-a-p h-e-a-p high ;
* Major Powell was the founder of the Bureau of
American Ethnology and director until his death in
1902. He was also for many years director of the
United States Geological Survey.
24 The Grand Canon
water go h-oo-woogh ; h-oo-woogh ;
water-pony heap buck ; water catch 'em ;
no see 'em Injun any more! No see um
squaw any more ; no see um papoose any
more ! " Thus the whole family was
wiped out.
It was an awesome experience, not only
full of definite, explicit dangers to be
battled with in sternly practical fashion,
day after day, but also colored deep with
a sense of mystery. To-day the actual
perils of rocks and rapids would be just
the same, but at least a voyager would
have maps and charts to refer to; he
would know what he might expect to find
around the next turn in the channel.
But, when Powell and his men went
through in 1869, they had absolutely no
certain knowledge of what perils might
at any hour lie before them. Shooting
swift rapids away down at the bottom of
a narrow gorge, where they had to look
up a vertical mile to see the edge of the
precipitous banks towering over their
heads, anything might be lying in wait for
them at the next bend in the stream. It
might any hour come about that they
would reach a place where the falls would
be too high to be passed, where the cliffs
at the side would be too sheer and smooth
to be climbed, and yet where the current
would be too swift to allow any possibility
of turning back !
of Arizona 25
The consciousness of all this fills an
entry in Major Powell's diary (August
I3th) :
" We have an unknown distance yet
to run, an unknown river to explore.
What falls there are, we know not ; what
rocks beset the channel, we know not;
what walls rise over the river, we know
not. Ah, well ! we may conjecture many
things ! The men talk as cheerfully as
ever; jests are bandied about freely this
morning; but to me the cheer is sombre
and the jests are ghastly."
Major Powell's account of the journey,
with his scientific observations made on
the way, was published by the United
States Government at Washington. He
wrote a graphic account of the trip for
Scribner's Magazine (1874), and a
popular volume by him, called The
Canyons of the Colorado was published
in 1895, by the Chautauqua Century
Press. The volumes in question are full
of thrilling adventures.
This is the sort of thing the men of the
expedition were continually having to do :
"We land and stop for an hour or two
to examine the fall. It seems possible to
let down with lines, at least part of the
way, from point to point, along the right-
hand wall. So we make a portage over
the first rocks and find footing on some
boulders below. Then we let down one
26 The Grand Canon
of the boats to the end of her line, when
she reaches a corner of the projecting
rock, to which one of the men clings and
steadies her while I examine an eddy be-
low. Some of the men take a line of the
little boat and let it drift down against
another projecting angle. Here is a shelf
on which a man from my boat climbs and
a shorter line is passed to him and he
fastens the boat to the side of the cliff.
Then the second one is let down, bring-
ing the line of the third. When the sec-
ond boat is tied up, the two men stand-
ing on the beach above spring into the
last boat. Then we let down the boats
for twenty-five or thirty yards, by walk-
ing along the shelf, landing them again
in the mouth of a side canyon. Just be-
low this there is another pile of boulders,
over which we make another portage.
From the foot of these rocks we can
climb to another shelf, forty or fifty feet
above the water. On this bench we camp
for the night. We find a few sticks
which have lodged in the rocks. It is
raining hard and we have no shelter, but
we kindle a fire and have our supper.
We sit on the rocks all night, wrapped in
our ponchos, getting what sleep we can."
In order to gain any foothold at all
in some parts of the rocky walls, where
they absolutely must crawl and lead the
of Arizona 27
boats, it was many times necessary for
one man to brace himself on the deck of
a boat and let another, carrying a line,
climb upon his shoulders to get the first
secure standpoint. Several times they
had to explore side canons in search of
fallen trees from which to make new
oars oars were always getting broken
against the rocks. Sometimes they
climbed far, far up the cliffs and terraces
to get from the scrubby pifion trees pitch
for re-calking the seams of the boats.
Once Major Powell carried a load of
pitch down to the boats in his shirt
sleeves, which he cut off to form impro-
vised sacks. Another time he reached a
shelf on the side of a precipice from
which it was impossible to move either up
or down. (Major Powell, by the way, had
lost his right forearm at Shiloh, but a tri-
fle like that did not lessen his readiness for
this sort of scramble!) After much dif-
ficulty, one of the other men came to the
rescue, doffing his drawers and using
their length like a rope to haul the leader
up to safety! Over and over different
members of the party were washed from
their boats or hurled out when a boat
capsized.
PowelFs second expedition was made
in 1871-72 with a party including
topographers, photographers, and geologi-
28 Tht Grand Canon
cal experts. The adventures of the sec-
ond expedition are graphically recounted
in Dellenbaugh's Romance of the Colo-
rado River, previously referred to, Mr.
Dellenbaugh having been personally one
of the second exploring party. Its re-
sult was the accumulation of a quantity
of accurate scientific observations, of
great value in any systematic study of the
geologic history of the continent. An-
other result, following close upon these
scientific researches, was the awakening
of wide and enthusiastic interest in the
canon on the part of the travelling and
reading public. Since the publication of
Major Powell's reports thousands of
other observers have come, some looking
into the great gulf with the gaze of the
scientist, some with the artist's " inward
eye/' keen to appreciate the miraculous,
overwhelming beauty of it all, in form
and light-and-shade and color.
" An inferno, swathed in soft, celes-
tial fires; a whole, chaotic under-world,
just emptied of primeval floods and wait-
ing for a new creative word ; eluding all
sense of perspective or dimension, out-
stretching the faculty of measurement,
overlapping the confines of definite appre-
hension; a boding, terrible thing, un-
flinchingly real, yet spectral as a dream/'*
* C. A. Higgins.
of Arizona
BOOKS TO READ
For the scientific facts of the region, see :
J. W. Powell : Canyons of the Colorado.
C. E. Button : Tertiary History of the Grand
Canon.
F. S. Dellenbaugh : Romance of the Colorado
River.
George Wharton James : In and Around the
Grand Canyon.
See also general works like
N. S. Shaler: The Story of Our Continent.
For stories of the exploration of the region, see:
J. W. Powell: Volume quoted above.
F. S. Dellenbaugh: Volume quoted above.
George Parker Winship: The Journey of Cor on-
ado, the First Explorer of the West (translation of
Castaneda).
For specially appreciative comments, see:
Charles Dudley Warner: Our Italy.
Harriet Monroe: Article in Atlantic Monthly,
Dec., 1899.
For interesting accounts of Indian life in this
region, see:
F. S. Dellenbaugh: North Americans of Yester-
day.
G. A. Dorsey: Indians of the Southwest.
George Wharton James: Volume quoted above,
and Indians of the Painted Desert Region.
The Grand Canon
METHODS
Always sit so that a strong, steady
light falls on the face of the stereograph.
It is a good plan to let the light come
from over your shoulder.
Hold the hood of the stereoscope close
against the forehead, shutting out all
sight of your immediate surroundings.
Move the sliding rack, with the stereo-
graph, along the shaft until you find the
distance best suited to your own eyes.
This varies greatly with different people.
Read what is said of each place in this
book.
Refer to the map and know exactly
where you are in each case.
Read the explanatory comments print-
ed on the back of each stereograph
mount.
Go slowly. Do not hurry.
Go again and yet again.
Think it over.
Read all the first-class books and maga-
zine articles that you can find bearing on
the subject of the Canon.
of Arizona
SEEING THE GRAND CANON
Eleven hundred miles west of Kansas
City the Santa Fe Railroad takes you
over the line into Arizona. It is a high,
dry, barren land through which the train
speeds, yet not vacant but full of inter-
est in its own taciturn, uncompromis-
ing fashion. Occasionally you get a hint
of what a canon is like, when the tracks
cross the gorge of some vanished river
and you look down into the bed where
torrents sometime swept and foamed and
battled with the ragged rocks that hemmed
them in. One such gorge, worth a pause
in the journey, you find in Canon Diablo.
It is between Holbrook and Flagstaff.
There is an Indian village near the little
railway station and at the train itself you
are likely to see members of the tribe,
dignified and dirty and shrewd at a bar-
gain, ready to sell baskets or blankets,
perhaps crude but effectively decorated
pottery made by the aboriginal proprie-
tors of this part of the world.
The Canon itself is worth seeing; some
Indian will show you the way to the point
marked I on Map I, where you get a
32 The Grand Cafwn
fine view both of the gorge and of the
railroad which spans it.
i. A Wonder to the Primitive Inhabitants
Santa F train crossing Canon
Diablo.
You are on the northeast side of the
track; that train is going towards Flag-
staff, thirty miles away at the west. The
cliffs on either side are chiefly of lime-
stone. It is the Arizona " sage brush "
that you see growing down here in the
trough of the valley, where it gets the
benefit of such water as there is.
The bridge up yonder is 540 feet long
and 222 feet high where it spans the low-
est part of the narrow valley.
It is amazing to see, out here in Ari-
zona, how much can be made out of the
slender possibilities of a gulley like this
as a help to subsistence. The Navajo
and the other Indians here in northeast
Arizona somehow manage to keep sheep
alive on the scanty grass in canons like
this ; they induce corn and beans to grow
in such places (the corn is a dwarf kind
but of good quality), and so they secure
a passable sort of subsistence where all
appears to be an almost hopeless desert.*
Two convenient ways of reaching the
Grand Canon are open to the traveller
* G. A. Dorsey : Indians of the Southwest.
of Arizona 33
who comes from Santa Fe (or from the
west) by rail. He can leave the train at
Flagstaff and go across-country, sev-
enty-three miles, by stage or on horse-
back. He can leave the main line at
Williams, thirty-six miles farther west
on the Santa Fe road, and there change
to another train on a spur track, which
will take him almost to the rim of the
canon (sixty-five miles). The latter is
the easier route, the former the more in-
teresting. Suppose you follow the Flag-
staff route.*
The first thirty-five miles of the jour-
ney take you past the huge, clustered
peaks of the San Francisco mountains,
north of town and railroad, and through
a great Government reservation of coco-
nino pines. Look back at the mountains
from one of the lesser heights twenty
miles farther toward the north.
2. From Red to San Francisco Moun-
tains a woody wilderness in sun-
kissed Arizona.
You are facing southeast towards the
railroad thirty miles away. Canon Diablo
* There are interesting side-trips that might be
made from Flagstaff, e.g., out to Walnut Canon,
eight miles southeast, where there are still standing
the stone-built houses of some ancient race, aban-
doned centuries ago.
34 The Grand Canon
is ahead and off at your left, between
forty and fifty miles distant.
A few years ago, cattle, horses and
sheep were raised in this vicinity, but
since the Government appropriated great
stretches of land for a national reserve
that business has been spoiled. The cat-
tle you see now are only a few stray head
strolling up here for water. You are
standing now on the lower slope of an
extinct volcano, but, curiously enough,
the only good spring of water for miles
and miles is up here (a little way behind
you) in the burnt-out crater where fiery
lava used to flow long centuries ago.
A few miles over beyond Slate Moun-
tain that wooded height at your right
there is just one solitary cabin, fifteen
miles from anywhere and anybody, the
home of a man who used to be a cattle-
raiser. Now he has taken to gold-min-
ing. His log-cabin is not much to look
at, but its pioneer hospitality offers the
chance traveller a share of whatever the
owner has, and a night there makes an
interesting experience.
Those snow-streaked mountains are
even higher than they look from here.
The main summit is fully 6,000 feet, i. e.,
more than a mile, above the plateau, and
the plateau itself is a strong 6,000 feet
above the sea-level. The uppermost
of Arizona 35
peaks (12,750 feet) stand actually as
high as many of the splendid giants of
the Bernese Alps, and even in midsum-
mer those snow-banks are often a mile
long and hundreds of feet wide. The
San Francisco group can be seen from a
distance of a hundred miles in almost any
direction in this part of Arizona. There
is a fairly good mountain road now lead-
ing up to the summit from Flagstaff, ten
miles away. What gives that group yon-
der peculiar interest for the geologist is
the fact that they were once the chimney-
stacks of a volcano ; those rock ridges
that show dark between the hollows filled
with everlasting snow are lava-rocks, and
at the top the crater sleeps to-day, cold
and dead.
But just turn about from this very spot
and you can see for yourself the silent,
passive form of another volcano the one
from whose slopes you have been looking
off. (Find the standpoint, marked 3, on
the map.)
3. Blown Asunder by Volcanic Energies;
Red Mountain, an Extinct Volcano.
The country all about here bears its
dramatic history written on its face. The
fiery past of this bit of the earth's sur-
face is something unmistakable those
36 The Grand Canon
curiously shaped, wave-like rocks of
reddish-gray are all lava-ash ; that steep
slope of nearly black sand just at this
side of the cliffs is a slippery mass of an-
cient cinders. The mountain itself is just
a bulging bit of the earth's crust, pushed
up and then torn open ages ago by tu-
multuous fiery masses below, and left
(when the fires cooled down) all en-
crusted with ashes and solidified drip-
pings, where Mother Nature's caldron
had boiled over. Since the time when this
was an active volcano the whole region
has been submerged and worn by run-
ning water. The queer shapes you see
are all partly the effect of the water's ac-
tion.
It is just ahead at the left, beyond the
sage-brush and those trees, where the cat-
tle you lately saw were going for water
all sorts of wild creatures resort there,
too foxes and wolves, antelope, even
ponderous bears with feet that leave
huge tracks in the muddy ground about
the cool spring.
Would you like to see those lava-ridges
more clearly? They are curious forma-
tions, well worth some study even in this
land full of wonders.
You will find standpoint No. 4 also lo-
cated on the map.
of Arizona 37
4. Labyrinthine Ways Through the Lava-
ash Formation, Red Mountain crater.
There is hardly a place in the world
where you can see so plainly as here in
northwestern Arizona just how primeval
forces worked with fire and with water to
make out of a (comparatively) thin-
skinned planet the world that we know.
Over at the Canon you will see the
mighty work of water, wind and
weather. Here you see all around you
towering walls and piles of stuff that
must have been at inconceivably furious
heat when it was blown out of the crater's
mouth in some frightful explosion of far,
far-off ages. Its material is that of the
inner core of the earth, torn into fine bits
by the rage of superheated steam or im-
prisoned gases, the moment that an out-
let was gained into upper air, and after-
wards compressed into the form of rather
porous rock, by the accumulation of its
own mass.
You could wander and clamber about
here for hours among these weird walls
and towers. One extraordinary fact
about the place is the way in which the
porous walls deaden sounds they seem
to absorb and destroy such vibrations.
Two people at opposite sides of one of
these thirty-foot screens could not shout
38 The Grand Canon
loud enough to make themselves heard
by each other.
But now for the Canon itself, twenty
miles away.
The approach to almost any one of the
best-known points on the southern rim
gives you practically no hint of what you
are about to see. You walk forward
and suddenly you can move no farther.
You have reached the end of the world !
5. " The Sinuous Colorado, Yellow as the
Tiber," North from Bissell's Point.*
You see about forty miles up-river;
that farther horizon is a part of the fa-
mous Painted Desert.
Distances and dimensions baffle the
judgment here. It takes time to adjust
the imagination to the gigantic scale on
which nature has worked. You see those
sculptured buttes over on the northwest
side of the river if the San Francisco
mountains could be plucked up from the
plateau behind you and set here in their
place you would know the difference only
by their shape ; the summits would hardly
reach the level of the bank where you
stand. If Niagara were pouring down
* You will find this exact spot marked on the
map, the red V lines showing the area over which
you look.
of Arizona 39
over one of those terraces you would
have to search with a good field-glass to
find it. You could hardly believe it any
more than a mountain brook. The Canon
of the Yellowstone and famous Yosemite
Valley, grand as they are in their own
corners of the earth, would here be lost
in a multitude of canons and valleys far
bigger and deeper and longer.
The color that envelops all this over-
whelming grandeur is something in itself
as marvellous as the rock-sculpture. The
cliffs over yonder are grayish-white, yel-
low, pink, dull red ; the shadows take on
the most beautiful, softly glowing hues
of amethyst and violet and purple. On
some of those more gently sloping ter-
races, where debris from the cliffs above
have given vegetation a chance to start,
you get the green of scrubby pinon trees,
like these just below your feet, and the
smoky, dusty green of sage-brush, yucca,
cactus and such forms of plant-life as
have the courage to start here. The gor-
geously magnificent effect of the whole is
something that cannot be described but
can be imagined.
Turn once more to the map, and you
will see dotted lines marking the course of
the old Red Canon trail downward from
a place on the rim a little south of Bis-
40 The Grand Canon
sel's Point. Part way down that trail
you find a point marked 6, from which
diverging lines reach out to the rim at
the northwest. Notice particularly that
the red lines end at the opposite rim
they show that you see just to the farther
brink of the river, but that only the sides
of the canon can possibly be in sight
nothing beyond nor above.
6. Among the Buttes, Red Canon Trail.
Is it not a surprise to find how ab-
ruptly the rocks make a straight, sheer
descent below your feet to that sloping
terrace? The horse is a sure-footed
beast and can be trusted to take care of
himself even on the edge of that dizzy
shelf where he waits for his mistress. It
is a tempting and yet baffling opportunity
for anybody who ever tries to sketch
landscape effects. Some of Thomas Mo-
ran's best work about the canon was done
at a point just behind and above you
(half a mile overhead!) on the rim.
You understand, of course, that this is
only a comparatively short distance down
into the canon's depth perhaps 2,000
feet below the brink, though the trail,
doubling and twisting and winding and
zigzagging, covered several miles in or-
der to reach even this point. It makes a
of Arizona 41
cen-mile journey between the rim and
the river a mile below the rim ! That omi-
nous, dark hollow beyond the sunny edge
of the terrace down there is the opening
of the lower gorge. Below that edge of
the terrace the cliffs go down almost
straight a half mile towards the heart of
the earth, before they wall in the river
as it rushes by towards the southwest
(left).
Now return to the normal level and
move still a little farther west to the
place on the rim which the map calls
Hance's Cove. It is named for Captain
John Hance, the veteran guide to the
Canon ; he came here in 1883 on a pros-
pecting tour, and was so impressed by
the awful beauty of the place that he has
never gone away, but lives here yet with
his cattle and his favorite pipe and his
dreams about gold mines of inconceiv-
able richness down somewhere in the bed
of the river below. Every fall he goes
down into the canon to spend the winter ;
he descends about 6,000 feet to a point
where the cattle can live on the terrace
growth of sage-brush, and there he
pitches a tent and lives with the winds
and the snows and the raging waters for
company.
ground near the rim slopes up-
42 The Grand Canon
ward toward the very brink at this point,
so it happens again that, a few rods away
from the edge, you see not the slightest
intimation of the presence of any gorge.
Looking from Hance's cabin, for in-
stance, there is no sign of the proximity
of any great sight, for a gentle rise in
the ground cuts off every distant view.
But when you climb that rise of ground
this is what bursts upon your sight :
7. Fathoming the Depths of a Vanished
Sea Grand Canon of Arizona from
Hance's Cove.*
The stream you see down below is only
a tributary of the Colorado ; this nearest
gorge, mighty as it yawns under your
feet, is only one of a hundred side
canons. The Colorado itself is flowing
by, beyond these buttes at the right, and
beyond where that nearly level terrace
stands out in a projecting point above the
farther reach of the creek.
A glimpse like this, where you see a
canon wall in profile, helps a good deal
towards realizing the stupendous facts of
those titanic rock-sculptures you see over
opposite. You observe how the river
channel has gradually narrowed as it
* Be sure to refer again to the map in order to
have your standpoint and range of view clearly and
accurately in mind.
of Arizona 43
deepened, the upper banks being worn
away by wind and frost and pouring rain
even after the river had gone off and left
them, so that the space between the banks
grew wider and wider with time. That
magnificent butte over in the north side
of the river (Vishnu Temple) is really
some distance this side of as well as be-
low the rim. It is part of one of the
ancient terraces which for some reason
stood the waters' wear and tear more ob-
stinately than the neighboring rock.
You can see very plainly in this side
canon the stratification of the rocks
whose material was first deposited as
mud in an ocean bed, then compressed
into solid rock, and later pushed up out
of the sea to meet the grinding cut of the
old outlet of the vanished inland sea.*
The glimpses of the river that one gets
from the rim are tantalizing. To see a
river a mile away, and know one will
have to travel perhaps ten miles to reach
it, gives the stream a certain unique fas-
cination. A number of trails, more or
less good, have been cleared and built at
different parts of the Canon on this side ;
there used to be one leading down from
Hance's Cove, but it has been so washed
by storms as to be nearly impassable.
One of the favorites at present is the
* See introductory chapter.
44 The Grand Cation
" Grand View." Now take your stand
on that trail, where you see the encircled
8 on the map. You will meet other
travellers coming down the steep path
over the broken ledges.
8. Descending Grand View Trail.
It makes one feel like hugging the wall
on the left ! The rim is some twelve hun-
dred feet above your head (over twice
the height of the Washington Monu-
ment), and yet the river is more than
three-quarters of a mile still farther
down, down, down, in the depths of this
chasm. Mile after mile of travelling like
this you would have to do before you
would actually reach its waters. What
looks like the bottom of the Canon away
down there, dotted with sage brush and
scrubby little trees, is only one of the
terraces, a somewhat broader shelf on the
side of the bank, such a formation as you
saw in profile on the buttes when you
looked down from Hance's Cove ( Stereo-
graph 7). It is about 2,000 feet below
the rim.
(Be sure to notice how the divergent
lines run on the map. Observe how they
indicate the way in which your outlook
here is cut off at the left by this canon
wall and how at the right you see away
of Arizona 45
off across the whole width of the canon.)
That picturesque tree is one of the
pinons that make themselves so much at
home in odd corners of the vast chasm.
It was from trees of this sort that Powell
gathered pitch to calk his boats during
that first daring voyage of exploration.
Until the branch railway was built
from Williams up to the point opposite
Bright Angel Creek, this was the trail
most visited by tourists. It is still one
of the most interesting of all the trails,
for open terraces like the one down below
give good opportunities to look up and
down the canon. Part way down there
is a copper mine, not completely devel-
oped.
These tough little burros are carrying
more than the usual amount of baggage,
for they belong to a camping party. The
blankets and provisions cinched on their
sturdy backs will provide not exactly
luxury but a very satisfactory sort of
comfort for anybody who enjoys ad-
venturous scrambles, and who can sleep
with a blanket for a pillow and the star-
lit sky for a roof. The reins left trail-
ing on the ground from that first animal's
head are practically orders for him to
stand still and wait. That is a traditional
part of the technical training of horses
here in the southwest.
46 The Grand Canon
These are sure-footed little beasts, pretty
nearly as agile as goats in climbing up
and down this crooked trail in places as
steep as a narrow flight of old-fashioned
stairs. Many a time a horseman going
over this path finds the head and shoul-
ders of his steed away out over the edge
of the cliff, so that he himself can (if his
own head is strong enough) look down a
thousand feet through absolutely open
space! Sometimes accidents do almost
happen. Before this very camping party
reached the river one of the horses did
somehow slip on one of the steepest and
most dangerous " ladders ;" the chronicler
said afterwards : " . . . The best horse car-
rying the best woman in the world, fell
headlong and came near rolling over the
precipice. With the agility of a feline the
lady leaped from the saddle and saved
herself and the horse. . . . Oh, yes,
*t was a breathless moment for the writer,
who had no wish to be a widower ! "
Away down below that terrace yonder,
this same trail takes you near some cu-
rious caves discovered in 1897 by a mem-
ber of another camping-party. You
leave your horse on the trail and scramble
up a steep slope of limestone. After a
few rods progress inside the cavern all
is black darkness you see nothing at all.
of Arizona 47
Then, if you have apparatus for produc-
ing a flashlight behold! This is what
the light discloses :
9. Dendritic Stalagmites in a Limestone
Cave.
All these exquisite shapes have, you
understand, been formed by the slow drip,
drip, dripping of water heavily charged
with lime ; the water long ago evaporated,
leaving behind this mineral stuff which it
had held in solution.
That opening ahead is, perhaps, eight
or ten feet high ; you could follow the
queer, hollow corridor on and on for
nearly an eighth of a mile into the heart
of the cliff. There is another cavern
much like it not far away.
Again the trail leads down, down, and
farther down. Below the limestone caves
is another terrace a broad, irregular
shelf of rock; a good deal like the one
on which you gazed from that dizzy
perch where the burros were descending
(Stereograph 8). Down on the lower
plateau there is a famous spring famous
partly because the water is really good
a!nd abundant, and partly because it is the
only spring for miles and miles. Find
the tenth standpoint on the map. You
48 The Grand Canon
will find the divergent red lines promise
you a long outlook off toward the left,
though the outlook at the right appears
to be cut off by some obstacle.
10. Angels' Gateway and Newberry Ter-
race from Cottonwood Spring.
You remember you are facing nearly
north. It seems as if those towering
heights must be mountain walls, but you
know the fact is that they are only parts
of the river banks ; though the vertical
distances you see are so enormous, almost
overwhelming in their dignified grandeur,
yet even now you do not see quite up to
the rim, and you see by no means down
to the bed of the river. The Colorado is
more than 1,200 feet below this plateau
where you stand now !
The enormous heights and depths of
this place grow upon the mind by de-
grees. At first they are too vast for
belief. After a while you become grad-
ually able to realize the meaning of statis-
tical facts and figures.
Quite the opposite of modern statistical
interpretation is the old Pi-Ute tradition
about that Gateway. This is the story as
Major Powell heard it years ago:
" Long ago there was a great and wise
chief who mourned the death of his wife,
of Arizona 49
and would not be comforted till Ta-
vwoats, one of the Indian gods, came to
him and told him she was in a happier
land, and offered to take him there that
he might see her himself, if upon his
return he would cease to mourn. The
great chief promised. Then Ta-vwoats
made a trail through the mountains that
intervene between that beautiful land, the
balmy region in the Great West, and this
the desert home of the poor Nu-ma.
This trail was the canon gorge of the
Colorado. Through it he led him, and,
when they had returned, the deity ex-
acted from the chief a promise that he
would tell no one of the joys of that land,
lest through discontent with the circum-
stances of this world, they should desire
to go to heaven. Then he rolled a river
into the gorge, a mad, raging stream, that
should engulf any that might attempt to
enter thereby."
Pi-Ute tradition says that sometime
the high gods (Those Above) will re-
turn to take all the Indian people into the
blessed regions, and that when they do
come they will appear through that gate-
way!
The trail oftenest followed down by
tourists is the " Bright Angel," named,
like the hotel, for a creek entering the
Colorado at that point in its course,
50 The Grand Canon
through a canon over on the opposite
(north) side. The creek was named by
Powell's exploring party in enthusiastic
appreciation of the quality of the water,
enthusiasm made the heartier because of
a previous disappointment when one of
the men had described a certain other
tributary as a " dirty devil."
The descent of the Bright Angel trail
is, in general terms, much like that of
the Grand View similar steep inclines
and overhanging cliffs, where your head
begins to whirl, and perilous curves and
zigzags. When you do finally reach the
river, after miles on miles of rough, hard
travelling, it is hard to realize from what
you see that you are actually so far down
in the great chasm.
Find standpoint n on the map. You
see it is close by the water's edge. No-
tice that the limited reach of the V lines
shows that you cannot see quite up to
the rim the intervening buttes and ter-
races cut off a longer view. (If you turn
back for a moment, say, to standpoint 5,
you will readily understand how a person
away down at the water's edge might not
be able to see anywhere near up to the
actual rim, because the lower cliffs and
buttes so closely shut him in.)
of Arizona 51
ii. Beside the Colorado; looking up to
Zoroaster Tower from Pipe Creek.
Your outlook is northeast over this
sharp bend in the river. What the depth
of the stream may be at this point one can
only conjecture. The boulders, stones and
gravel that you see alongside the stream
are fragments torn from the cliffs by
which the river has swept, or bits torn
from the heights above by rending frost
and pouring, driving rain. Imagine the
sudden fierceness with which the waters
of a heavy rain would pour down into the
river here ! Almost every drop falling
within the area between the widely sep-
arated rims must quite soon reach this
hurrying stream, for the walls, you re-
member, are almost all impenetrable rock;
the only absorbent soil is the thin coating
on the terraces. In May and June, when
the snows are fast melting on the
Rockies, the river rises to its height; the
freshets then are something tremendous.
Zoroaster Tower is that most conspic-
uous butte standing up against the sky
from the northern wall. A good many of
the buttes, you notice, have Oriental
names; their outlandish beauty of form
so strongly suggests the conception of the
old Eastern architects that such names
were given almost instinctively by early
52 The Grand Cation
explorers who appreciated their peculiar
kind of beauty.
Down past these very walls and fantas-
tic rock towers, round this very bend in
the river, the men of Powell's first ex-
pedition came in 1869. Some of their
most exciting adventures were met far-
ther up stream, before they reached this
particular point, but even here there was
ominous mystery hanging over the way.
As they came around that very turn in the
stream, they could not know but what
some new danger might prove impossible
to avoid, impossible to surmount.
And to think of the journey these
waters themselves have made ! Some
part of this raging, impetuous flood has
come away down from the Wind River
Mountains in Wyoming. Some part of
the waters that you see now torn into
filmy bubbles by ugly rocks underneath
may once have been borne by the wind
in fleecy white clouds over the wide
reaches of Yellowstone Park, and
dropped in the form of rain on the giant
slope of Fremont's Peak, six hundred
miles away from this scene of noisy haste
and turmoil.
The river here is perhaps a couple of
hundred feet wide. It is an interesting
experience to look at it from different
of Arizona 53
heights, watching it take the look of a
smaller and smaller stream as you go
higher and higher on your way back up
to terra-firma.
See, for instance, how it narrows to
the look of a mere creek when you are
only twelve hundred feet above the water
considerably less than a quarter of the
way lip to the rim.
12. Down the Granite Gorge of the
Colorado (1,200 feet deep), from
Pyrites Point.
(Find this location on the map. It is
marked 12.)
Here you have a chance to see very
plainly the difference between the
primeval granite that walls in this gorge
below and the stratified rocks which
overlie and enwrap the granite core on
the outside. What you see before your
very eyes shows, as no amount of written
description could show, the different
ways in which running water affected the
upper layers (which were really com-
pressed and compacted masses of what
had once been gravel, sand and mud),
and this lower mass of the original core
of the earth.
Returning to the Bright Angel trail,
your guides will probably tell you of
54 The Grand Canon
alluring " finds " of gold in this part of
the Canon. Captain Hance, the veteran
among Canon guides, has devout, though
perhaps not well grounded, faith in the
existence of immense gold beds in the
vicinity, but they would have to be beds
rich almost beyond men's dreams to make
their development pay, the expense of
transporting apparatus and supplies
would be so enormous. The finds so far
made have not been fully developed. And
yet, the gold-fever is hard to cure when
it gets into one's veins ; any man who
once catches it always has his eyes open
and his hammer ready. See, for instance,
how a man at work on the construction
of the trail manages to keep a sharp tally
on every possible indication of the pres-
ence of the precious stuff.
13. Prospecting for Gold Indian Garden
Creek.
This spot is located like all the others,
on the map. The conspicuous butte in
the distance is the Buddha.
The load carried by this little burro
means " all the comforts of home " to
a prospector. Hot coffee, fried bacon
and frying-pan bread make a meal more
tempting than those of the Waldorf-
Astoria, if your appetite has been sharp-
of Arizona 55
ened by long hours of climbing over the
rocks in this clear Arizona air.
The way down is dizzy and hard; the
way up brings new impressions and new
experiences. One of the bewildering
things about the upward climb is the fash-
ion in which the trail ahead often hides
from your view, almost making you think
that there is no trail that it has vanished
by some bewitchment of this eerie place
and left you a helpless prisoner at the
foot of insurmountable prison walls!
One such place they call " Cape Horn."
There has been a narrow (Oh, so nar-
row !) shelf along which to pick your way
with careful steps, but just ahead a huge,
rough promontory juts out from the rest
of the cliff, and seems positively to cut
your path quite off, with its grim an-
nouncement of No passing. It really
does look as if the trail ended there in
despair, and as if you might just as well
sit down on the edge of the cliff and wait
for your end.
But, no! You do not give up and sit
down on the edge of the cliff; you move
on, and on ; the shelf obligingly does con-
tinue under your feet, and, when you
reach the threatening, bulging brow of
that forbidding bulk, the trail just swings
itself around by a sharp curve to the
56 The Grand Canon
other side, and you see steps and hope
ahead !
14. Rounding Cape Horn on the Bright
Angel Trail.*
You can see the steps or " ladder " this
minute hardly the place for an ordinary
horse, but these animals have been over
'.his same trail many times and have
nearly as good judgment as their masters
with regard to how to do it.
Cliffs like these sometimes even
steeper Powell and his men climbed
every now and then, fastening their boats
far below, and scaling the jutting crags,
in order to look off up and down the
stream, and so get a sense of the place as
one inclusive whole. Fancy such a climb
in an absolutely trackless, unknown
solitude.
The location of the hotel for tourists
opposite the side canon of Bright Angel
Creek was a wise choice. The views
from the rim close by the Bright Angel
hotel are wonderfully beautiful, and show
the characteristic aspects of the incredible
gorge in a particularly dramatic way.
Take a look now north-northeast across
from a point on the rim close by the hotel.
It is from this part of the rim that most
* This spot is located at 14 on the map.
of Arizona 57
tourists nowadays get their first impres-
sions of the Canon as a whole. Stand-
point 15 (so marked on the map) is the
exact spot from which you are to look.
It is a favorite resort of the famous
painter Thomas Moran ; you have, indeed,
a chance to see him here with one of his
sketch-books in hand.
15. Thomas Moran, America's greatest
scenic artist, sketching at Bright
Angel Cove.
You see now in close detail the ex-
traordinary, terraced architecture of one
of the beautiful buttes. It seems a
wonder that those tough little pifion trees
can find enough earth to grow in ; they
can, of course, have no water except what
falls directly on that narrowed summit
from showers passing over this arid land,
yet they grow and thrive.
That long, tapering trough over on
the opposite side of the river, made by
those deep shadows grotesquely like some
great dragon, is the canon of Bright
Angel Creek. Pipe Creek, from whose
mouth you looked up and across to
Zoroaster Tower ( Stereograph 1 1 ) enters
the river almost opposite the " Bright
Angel," from this (south) side of the
stream.
58 The Grand Canon
Seeing the Canon in this way, and
especially with this afternoon light mak-
ing the hollow of Bright Angel Canon
so significantly conspicuous, Dellen-
baugh's picturesque interpretation of the
topography is especially full of meaning.
Refer right here to the quotation on page
14 from his Romance of the Colorado
River: " The Grand Canon may be lik-
ened to an inverted mountain range.
Imagine a great mountain chain cast up-
side down in plaster/' etc., etc.
Charles Dudley Warner was one of
the first writers who attempted to tell
people what all this was like. The Grand
Canon chapters in his volume called Our
Italy are well worth reading.
" I was continually likening this/' he
says, " to a vast city rather than a land-
scape, but it was a city of no man's crea-
tion nor of any man's conception. In
the visions which inspired or crazy pain-
ters have had of the New Jerusalem, of
Babylon the Great, of a heaven in the
atmosphere with endless perspective of
towers and steeps that hang in the twi-
light sky, the imagination has tried to
reach this reality. But here are effects
beyond the artist, this great space is filled
with gigantic architectural constructions,
with amphitheatres, gorges, precipices,
walls of masonry, fortresses terraced up
of Arizona 59
to the level of the eye, temples, mountain-
size, all brilliant with horizontal lines of
color, streaks of solid hues a few feet in
width yellows, mingled white and gray,
orange, dull red, brown, blue, carmine,
green, all blending in the sunlight into
one transcendant suffusion of splendor."
Seeing the Canon through stereo-
graphs, you must needs use not only
your actual physical eyes but the eyes of
your imagination, in order to appreciate
the color effects which are so marvellous
a part of its unspeakable splendor. The
color glories of the place are, perhaps,
especially wonderful near sunset, when
the sunlight, striking almost horizontally
through the lower strata of the earth's
atmosphere, seems to turn all the air into
a softly glorified haze shot through and
through with melting hues. (Take stand-
point 1 6 as marked on the map.)
16. " Over All Broods a Solemn Silence"
Sunset at O'Neill's Point.
One man who looked upon a sight like
this wrote about it : " The vision of the
Canon at sunset is one of the marvels.
All its colors are intensified, and the reds
and yellows burn like coals. When the
low sun gilds the red sandstone masses,
oceans of rose-flame sweep up the walls,
60 The Grand Canon
more and more brilliant as they climb,
until the topmost thousand feet of the far-
ther rim blaze with the fire of hyacinth,
ruby and garnet. The splendor rises and
fades and is caught by the vapors over-
head." *
One of the grandest, broadest outlooks
across the Canon can be had from Rowe's
Point a little farther down river (west).
You do not see from that part of the rim
away down to the very waters of the
river, the depth is too great and the inter-
vening buttes of ragged rock stand up
across the line of vision ; but the terrific
suddenness of the walls' descent makes
you, even when you think yourself ac-
customed to such things, catch your
breath with amazement and awe.
17. Overlooking Nature's Grandest Am-
phitheatre from Rowe's Point to
Point Sublime
That great, square-topped headland
opposite is Point Sublime. You see
beyond it the broad opening of the side
canon where Shinumo Creek brings
tributary waters down to the river. Point
Sublime is the same headland that you
looked at through the veil of sun-filled
haze from O'NenTs Point. See the loca-
tion on the map. (Stereograph 16.)
* C. M. Skinner in the Brooklyn Eagle.
of Arizona 61
It takes " nerve " to sit in that non-
chalant fashion with over a thousand feet
of empty space between your swinging
heels and the ground below! The
Indians of this region, imaginative as they
all are, arid ingenious in the planning of
hideous terrors for a hated enemy, used
in old times to put an end to captives by
swinging them off from a cliff a good
deal like this one (Apache Point), farther
down the river on this side. George
Wharton James, who has spent years in
intimate, friendly association with the
Havasupai, the Indians of Havasupai
Canon, just off at the west, learned from
them about the horribly dramatic custom
of the tribe. The Apaches were for cen-
turies their enemies and many times
descended upon the Havasu villages,
spreading destruction and murder in
their path. If the Havasupai were able
to rally and lucky enough to capture their
invaders, a fearful vengeance was taken.
" One method of killing them was to
bring them out to Apache Point where
there is a frightful precipice, and there,
one man holding the prisoner by the hair
and the other by his feet, calling upon all
the evil powers that are supposed to lurk
in and about Chic-a-mi-mi Hack-a-tai-a
(the Grand Canon), the unhappy wretch
was swung to and fro over that awful
62 The Grand Canon
precipice; then, with a wild yell of
triumph, giving him a fierce swing out-
ward, both captors loosed their hold on
the wretched Apache." *
But those days of horror are over; no
gruesome tragedies stain the Canon walls
to-day. Its message to men is one of aw-
ful splendor, of solemn glory, but not of
terror. All men may peer into the vast,
mysterious deeps with the fearless gaze
of trustful children.
18. On the Brink, one mile above the
river; northwest from Rowe's
Point.
Be sure to identify this standpoint as
well as all the rest. The map shows that
you are facing somewhat north of west.
Just below the dangling feet of these little
folks yawns the opening of one of the
smaller side canons ; over beyond its far-
ther wall you have your last look at the
river flowing west-north west in its devious
onward way to the Gulf of California.
Those waters you see far down below
have been past Bissell's Point (Stereo-
graph 5) ; they have swept by the granite
base of the gigantic pedestal of Zoroaster
Tower (Stereograph n) ; they have gone
tearing like mad through the narrow
* George Wharton James : In and Around the
Grand Canon,
of Arizona 63
granite gorge below Pyrites Point
(Stereograph 12). Still their Herculean
task is not ended. Farther yet stretch out
the long reaches of jagged walls and
ferocious cliffs that are still to be passed.
You are looking now altogether into
the Canon, not directing your gaze high
enough to see an inch of sky above the
bounding rim. Again you can trace the
layers of stratified rocks, telling of history
so far back that it staggers the imagina-
tion. Again you see where the pitiless
river has laid bare the inner substance
of the earth's crust.
And yet after all, the river speaks here
not entirely of the past. It speaks of the
future, too. Those waters you see yonder
are continuing the work of their ancestral
predecessors, but at the same time they
are on their way to begin a new career.
Outside these prison walls, away off down
at the shore of the Gulf of California,
they will find their freedom under new
skies and new winds. And who knows
what winds may woo them from the sea
and take them sailing in misty cloud?
Who knows where they may go, or on
what new mission in world-making, after
once they reach the end of this strange
journey, when once they find the goal that
Nature's inexorable law bids them seek,
the Pacific Ocean, the vast Sea of Peace ?
They are so realistic and natural
that one feels as if he were beholding
the actual scenery ; so realistic is the
scene made that he obtains the inspi-
ration which actual sight gives. The
Hon. JOHN L. BATES, Governor of
Massachusetts.
The emotions awakened are the
same as those aroused by looking at
the actual scene, differing only in
intensity and quantity from those
gained on the spot. . . . The
mind retains a consciousness of hav-
ing actually seen the places examined
rather than of having studied a pho-
tograph. Zions Herald.
I have recently gone through a
series of stereographs of Rome with
maps and book, and although I never
have actually visited Rome, neverthe-
less, I feel that I secured genuine
experiences of being in Rome, which
were as "real" as the experiences ob-
tained in places where I have actually
been. JAMES E. LOUGH, PH.D., Pro-
fessor of Experimental Psychology^ New
Tork University.
64
GRAND CANYON TOUR, MAP NO. 1
t-atented U. S. A., August 21, luoo.
Patented France, March 26, 1900. JS. <V. I). <
Patented Great Brttain, March 22, 1900.
Switzerland, c[J3 Patent Nr. 21,2
EXPLANATIONS OF MAP SYSTEM.
(I). The re'd lines on this map mark out the territory shown in th
respective stereographs.
(2). The numbers in circles refer to stereographs corresponi
ingly numbered.
(3>\ The apex ^^ or point from which two lines branch ou
indicates the place from which the view was taken, viz., the place fro
which we look out, in the stereograph, over the territory between th
two lines. *
(4), The branching lines <C^^ indicate the limits of tV
stereographed scene, viz. , the limits of our vision on the right and ie
when looking at the stereograph,
