The two great canyons; excerpts from letters written on a western journey

University of California • Berkeley

From the

FRANCIS P. FARQUHAR
EXPLORATION LIBRARY

Gift of

THE MARJORY BRIDGE FARQUHAR
1972 TRUST

tf****

The Two Great Canyons

The Two Great Canyons

Excerpts From

Letters Written on a Western

Journey

BY
Cyrenus Cole

Cedar Rapids, Iowa
The Torch Press
Nineteen Hundred Eight

To Mrs. N. D. Pope
of Lat^e Charles, Louisiana,

These excerpts from letters written for the Cedar Rapids Republi-
can and Evening Times are dedicated, because she made all the
Ways pleasant ones and all the places happy ones for three men —
one of whom is her husband

YELLOWSTONE National Park,
Mammoth Springs Hotel, August
14, 1908: We have reached the
first hotel station on the tour of the Yellow-
stone National Park, which, according to
the legend on the arch over the entrance,
has been set aside "For the benefit and
enjoyment of the people." We left Min-
neapolis on the night train and found our-
selves the next morning in the wheat coun-
try, on the state lines of Minnesota and
North Dakota. In the wheat country there
is nothing impressive, except the magnifi-
cent distances. As far as the eye can
reach, and that is very far, one sees a level
expanse, covered with wheat, some in the
shock and some still on the stalk. The
towns, also, lack impressiveness. Most of
them are mere wheat stations. Fargo and
Bismarck and Mandan are, however, not
without commercial and historic interest.
At Bismarck, I recalled what Mr. Bryce

7

wrote in "The American Commonweal th."
He was present, in 1883, when the corner
stone of the state house was laid, with im-
posing ceremonies, General U. S. Grant and
"Sitting Bull" being among the honored
guests. Mr. Bryce records that one of the
orators upon that occasion remarked that
Bismarck was destined to "be the metro-
politan hearth of the world's civilization."
Mr. Bryce says he asked why the state
house was "not in the city," but "a mile
off, on the top of a hill in the brown and
dusty prairie," and he was told, by the
enthusiastic spirits of the place, that in a
few years that hill would be the center of
the city that was to be. But the state house
still stands out of town. Many hopes in
real estate are unrealized, but let us hope
they have only been deferred. A hundred
years from now all the open country may
be teeming with populations. In much of
the wheat country there are no country
homes, only places in which the wheat
growers live long enough to plant and to
gather their crops. The wheat fields end
in the Bad Lands, and these would not be
so interesting, were they not so dreary.
On the Little Missouri one begins to see
patches of alfalfa. It was on this river

8

that Theodore Eoosevelt ranched, equipped
with a college diploma and his indomitable
spirit. One ascends gradually into the
mountains, up the Yellowstone Eiver, to
Livingston, where they break the trans-
continental journey for the Yellowstone
National Park trip. It is fifty-five miles
from Livingston to Gardner and five or
six miles from Gardner to the Mammoth
Springs Hotel, the last five miles being
covered by stages.

The hotel is crowded. People are com-
ing and going. They jostle each other and
rush about frantically, looking for baggage
and worried about many things. Those
who have "done" the Park are anxious to
get away, and those who are about to "do
it" are as anxious to be on their way. All
sorts and conditions of people are here,
the aged and the young, the rich and the
poor, women always predominating in
numbers and in activity. The postal card
fad is at its height here. The postage that
is paid on these trifles ought to pay the
government a dividend on the money it
has invested in the Park.

II.

YELLOWSTONE National Park,
Old Faithful Inn, August 15: It
has been raining in the Park. The
weather has been lowering before a bluster-
ing wind, with snow and sleet. People sat
shivering in the stage coaches today, but
they tell us we are more fortunate than
those who have been compelled to make
the journey in the dust. Mr. Jones and
Mr. Pope came in dusters, but they have
donned their overcoats, instead. Every
one who has made the tour of the Park
thinks he can tell you all about it, but the
truth is that no one knows anything about
the weather here, it is so variable and
there is so much of it. It is clearing now
and every one is buoyant. It is sunshine
after a storm that makes people happy,
especially the women. They like sunshine.
This inn is an interesting point in the
journey. It is built entirely out of logs,
seven stories high, at the peak. It has

10

great fire places and a rustic dining room,
where the food begins to taste "shippy."
In these places one's appetite always
craves the things that are not placed before
you. Resort hotels are the most contrary
places in the world. The name of the inn
is taken from that of the geyser, the largest
now in action in the Park basin, Old Faith-
ful, so named because it gives an exhibi-
tion every hour. The water is thrown a
hundred feet in the air and the spray that
accompanies it, and the vapor, are beauti-
ful to see. The basin, in front of the hotel,
is filled with miniature geysers and in
whichever direction one looks he can see
vapor rising from crevices. In many
places the crust is thin and treacherous.
Some of the pools have the most delicate
formations and the most exquisite color-
ings, comparable with nothing except the
colors in precious stones. Some are green
and some are blue and some are like morn-
ing glories. The smell of sulphur is in
the air. There are also the ugly things,
mud geysers, unwholesome holes bubbling
with and spouting out mud, like toads.
Some people insist on seeing every crevice.
They tramp about until they are all tired
out. That is what they call " doing'' the

Park. The poor Park, and the poorer mor-
tals ! But to me it seems easier and better
to sit down quietly and absorb the spirit
of things. The mountains clad with the
green timber, the rich blue sky, fleeced with
delicate clouds, over all. It is a great joy
to be in the midst of these natural wonders.
Why weary one's self with the details?
Why make it a place of weariness? It is
a great picture gallery of the gods. Here
they have left unfinished the work of cre-
ation. But people go through it, rushing
about it as about bargain counters in the
stores.

12

m.

YELLOWSTONE National Park,
Lake Hotel, August 15, 1908 : We
left Old Faithful Inn this morn-
ing with some regrets. One could spend
several days there with profit. The inn
itself is comfortable and the surroundings
attractive. We have had the misfortune
to be overtaken by a party of excursion-
ists, who entered the Park from the west.
An excursionist is an uninteresting travel-
er. He is apt to be some one who is trav-
eling because the rates are cheap. The
regular tourists were very much put out by
the overcrowding. But if one wants to be
alone, or with a few friends, he must not
follow the beaten paths of the Park.

There are many ways of traveling in
vogue. The easiest way is by the stages
of the transportation company, which owns
and operates the hotels. In the hotels one
is apt to get a good bed and, sometimes,
a bath. The food served in the dining

13

rooms is of the conventional hotel variety.
All the supplies are brought into the Park
in heavy freight wagons. Most of the
things are taken out of cans, but a few
fresh vegetables are supplied from gardens
cultivated by the hotel company. The
milk also is fresh, drawn from cows kept
in the Park. Cheaper modes of travel and
subsistence are supplied by camping out-
fits. One company maintains a series of
permanent camps, and others use movable
camps, carrying all their bedding and their
utensils with them from place to place.
But whichever way one travels, he is apt
to pick up many friends. Friendships, in
fact, are easily made in the Park. For the
time they seem very real, and partings at
the end of a journey seem almost like part-
ings with old friends. It all comes from
the fact that the people one meets here are,
for the time being, all the people there are
in this little miniature world.

But we are still leaving Old Faithful Inn,
so far as this letter is concerned. The re-
grets that many felt in leaving the inn
were increased by the disagreeableness of
the weather outside. It was a miserable
rainy morning. It drizzled all the time
and, intermittently, there were downpours

14

of water. It fell to my lot to ride on the
outside of the coach, with the driver, which
is a very choice seat in fair weather. When
it is rainy, the ladies, and the ladies' men
always prefer to ride inside. But there
is so much chattering inside, often about
nothing, that a quiet man prefers to be
outside, even in the rain. The driver is
a good fellow. He does not talk much. He
is too intent on watching his horses moving
on a slippery road, often around abrupt
curves. The four fine chestnut horses were
real good company, so intelligent and so
willing and so eager. It was hard work
this morning to pull the coach, for there
was a gradual ascent, from one hundred
to two hundred feet to the mile. Plenty
of clear water was running in the mountain
streams. We crossed the continental di-
vide, at an elevation of about 8,300 feet,
but we soon recrossed the line and found
ourselves once more on the Atlantic slope.
The driver pointed out many objects of in-
terest, among them Shoshone Lake, rest-
ing in the laps of mountain peaks, a beau-
tiful body of water. But the persons in-
side the coach seemed oblivious to many
things, except the mileposts which they
counted, audibly, with great regularity —

15

there were thirty-four of them to count to
the next lodging place. And it rained all
the time!

It was on this part of the journey that
I learned most about the animal life in
the Park. It was one of the things in which
the driver was interested. There is all
manner of life in the Park, from weasels
to antlered deer and bear, and in the air,
birds from the tiniest creatures picking
their livings in the pine trees, to the state-
ly waterfowls that strut about in seven
league boots. All the birds and animals;
all the creatures that crawl and burrow in
the earth, or that fly in the air, are pro-
tected by the omnipotent arm of the govern-
ment in Washington. The soldiers who
patrol the Park are the only ones who are
allowed to bring guns into the preserve.
Not a shot is fired to break the stillness
of the surroundings. The squirrels romp
in the tree tops and the beavers carry on
their prodigious works just as they did
before there was a man on this continent.
Here the foxes have holes in the ground
and the birds have nests in the trees, and
there is no one to disturb them. The re-
sults are wonderful. The birds and ani-
mals hardly know what fear is, they seem

76

so greatly unconcerned about the presence
of passing people. Here they find

"No enemy

But winter and rough weather/'
and of these they find a great deal during
the winter months. The tinges of winter
are already in the air, even in August, for
winter comes early on this high elevation
and when it comes it is severe, the mercury
falling to forty degrees below zero and the
snow piling up to depths of ten or twelve
feet.

On our thirty-four mile journey we were
shown many objects of interest, pools the
bottoms of which rival the rarest flowers
and gems in their colorings. But also some
ugly things, mud geysers, filthy and bad
smelling. At noon we halted for luncheon
at one end of the Yellowstone Lake, and
some persons took boats, making the rest
of the day's journey by water. We
reached the Lake Hotel at about four
o'clock in the afternoon, tired enough to
appreciate the comforts and hospitalities
of the place. This hotel is one of the best
in the Park, lighted by electricity and heat-
ed with steam, the rooms all cheerful ones.
The meals in the dining room, also, were
good. The lake itself is a wonderful body

17

of water, considering its extent and its
elevation. The tops of the mountains
stand all around it. It lies in the hollows
formed between mountain ranges. But
aside from these features, it is not more
interesting than other bodies of water.

After the rains, the sun went down in
mountain splendors. How good it seemed
to see the light flooding through the break-
ing clouds! We have been very anxious
about the sun for tomorrow is our day at
the Canyon of the Yellowstone and there,
if anywhere, one needs the sun to bring
out the colors. I have heard so much about
this Canyon, since coming to the Park, and
read so much about it before coming here,
that I am very anxious to see it and to
measure it with my expectations. So far,
I must confess, nothing has exceeded my
expectations, and much has fallen far be-
low them. The things as they are, often
play havoc with the things as we have
imagined them.

18

IV.

YELLOWSTONE National Park,
Canyon Hotel, August 16: We
were not disappointed in the
weather today. A rarer Sunday morning
never dawned, not even in the mountains.
There were still some remnant clouds in
the sky. Fortunately, too, these did not
disappear entirely. All day bits of fleecy
clouds floated between the sun and the
earth, not enough to darken, but just
enough for contrasts. The air was bracing
and there was plenty of it.

As usual, our coach led all the rest.
Forty or fifty came trailing behind. Ev-
ery one was filled with persons in high glee
and in great expectations. The road was
a winding one along the Yellowstone Eiver,
up ridges and dipping down into hollows,
with many a curve and a few short angles,
the rolling and tumbling river nearly al-
ways in sight. The river is the outlet for
the lake, or rather, the lake is but an ex-

79

tension, in width, of the river, forming a
large reservoir for the waters from the
mountains and from the springs, thus in-
suring a constant flow for the river.

After leaving the lake, the waters in the
river flow on as they do in any other river,
leisurely and calmly. The water is won-
derfully clear, coming from the snows in
the mountains. The rocky bottoms of the
river are visible from the tops of the coach-
es and fishes may often be seen swimming
and darting about. Across the river there
is a gradual ascent of ground, until it
forms a skyline of miniature mountain
peaks. There are vast mountain meadows
clothed in grays and browns, autumn col-
ors mingled with the colors of the sage.
It makes an indescribable color and the
effect of it also is an indescribable one.
On our own side of the river we are riding
through endless beds of flowers, the kind
of beds that nature makes in a large and
liberal country. Their colors are blue and
purple and red. Of mountain daisies, yel-
low flowers on delicate stems, there are
millions. The flowers alone would be worth
coming to see, to say nothing of the furzy
mountain meadows, like vast oriental rugs
spread out by the hand of a generous God !

20

The water in the river is green, when it
flows over beds of moss and black and fore-
boding when it runs under the shadows of
the overhanging rocks. As we proceed on
our journey, these projecting rocks become
more numerous. The banks gradually
grow more precipitous and the channel,
narrower. The waters grow more dis-
turbed. Signs of some impending catas-
trophe to the river multiply. The waters
now roll and surge. From side to side
they dash themselves against the rocks, fill-
ing the air with a spray. The river be-
comes furious and it makes a great commo-
tion. Finally, in one great dash the waters
rush over the upper falls, a distance of
one hundred and ten feet down. Then,
imprisoned in a narrow gorge, seething and
foaming and roaring, they rush forward
until they come to the lower falls, where
they make a spectacular descent of three
hundred and six feet, filling the air with
foam and spray and the scene with glory,
all the way down. The whole thing is God-
like, that is the only phrase that can de-
scribe it. God-like in power, in beauty and
in majesty.

The lower falls is the beginning of the
greater glory of the Yellowstone river. At

21

the bottom of the gorge the tumultuous
waters continue on their way, so far down
that what is a river looks like a yellow rib-
bon. From the river bed the gorge widens
and makes the magnificent spectacle of the
Canyon of the Yellowstone river. If such
a gorge had been cut in the dullest stone,
it would be an awe-inspiring thing, but cut
through rocks of the brightest hues the
scene is bewildering, amazing and enthrall-
ing. And the longer you look at it, the
more the wonder grows. What at first ap-
pears to be a wild riot of colors, yellow
predominating, becomes a fabric of the
most delicate colorings, blended as nature
blends colors and softened as time softens
them. There is no color and no shade that
is missing. There is as much there as the
eye has time or capacity to develop. No
one has seen it all, no one will ever see it
all. Each man sees but a fraction and a
fragment of it. All the eyes of the world
cast into one with all time at its command
could not exhaust the possibilities of the
combinations in forms and colors.

Here, I thought, is the one place where
no traveler can be disappointed, no dream-
er disillusioned. Here the things that are,
are more than the things imagined. This

22

is the transformation scene of all the earth.
This is the one great masterpiece in nature,
perfect in all its details, endless in all its
combinations of colors and forms, imposing
in its grandeur. As I looked at it, I felt
that nature had nothing more to say to
me and that in the way of scenery my heart
had nothing more to long for. Here is
the throne of majesty in the temple of the
beautiful. With unuttered thoughts in
his mind and unfinished sentences on his
lips, one must turn away from the Canyon
of the Yellowstone.

Monday morning, when we rode away
from the scene, a dense fog hung over the
river. Others were coming where we were
leaving. Our day's journey was back to
the Mammoth Springs Hotel. For us the
Park was a finished book, however many
the pages which we had skipped, and how-
ever imperfectly we may have read the few
passages that fell under our eyes. Streams
and meadows, cliffs and mountain peaks
covered with snow, lined the way outward
bound, but it seemed to me that, somehow,
the falling of the waters and the glimmer-
ing of the colors of the Canyon, dimmed
all other things.

23

SEATTLE, Washington, August 19:
After spending a few hours in Liv-
ingston, which has a sightly loca-
tion, at the mouth of a canyon and in sight
of a mountain on which the snow lies for
ten months in the year, we proceeded west-
ward. From Montana we passed into
Idaho, where the tree butchers are cutting
up the last remnants of the white pine. It
is, for the most part, a dreary country,
where the timber has been cut over and
where forest fires have left masses of
charred stumpage. Waste everywhere
and nothing but waste! The American
lumberman in the past has picked out the
best and left the rest to the desolation that
follows the man with the axe and the torch.
It has been the working out of the practical
American idea of getting the most money
with the least care about the future. It
is pity and disgust and indignation that
one feels. But such are the ravages of

24

commerce in a commercial era among a
commercial people.

The next day we reached Spokane, on
the other side of the Eockies, mistress of
a vast industrial area, reaching up into
the mountains on one side, with their mines
and their lumber, and stretching out over
the Washington wheat fields, on the other.
A great city, the creation of a few years,
but to the casual traveler, more or less un-
interesting, broiling and sizzling in the Au-
gust sun, treeless, for the most part, and
to that extent cheerless. But the volume
of business transacted is large and the bus-
iness buildings are fine and the people,
grown richer, are building new houses and
surrounding themselves with the luxuries
which American people everywhere seek
after and prize.

Leaving Spokane, going westward, one
enters the great wheat country, a plateau
lying between the Eocky Mountains and
the coast ranges. Where the railroads run,
the country is more or less rough, with
here and there formations that suggest
"bad lands," but much of the country is
level and productive. It is a vast treeless
region ; rainless in summer. The mercury
rises as high as 100 in the night time.

25

When the wind blows, which it is apt to
do, dust fills the air. Much of the soil
seems to be as fine as flour and very light
when it is very dry. We rode for hours
without seeing a drop of water, in creek
or lake. What a precious thing water must
be to the people — in summer time, when
they need it most! There are no homes
in these wheat fields. Here and there are
scattered hovels which the sowers and the
reapers use in their seasons, but no per-
manent abodes. Wire fences are stretched
across the fields, far apart. How differ-
ent it all is from the farming countries of
the Mississippi Valley, with their well
fenced farms, the homes of the farmers in
the midst of groves and orchards and the
grazing herds of cattle and flocks of sheep.
Here and there one saw a horseman riding
in a pillar of dust. The trails of dust one
sees are the only evidences of highways,
or of travel. It is a great wheat producing
country, when it has been revived by the
rains of winter, but the men who grow that
wheat ought to be well paid for their la-
bors. It was night when we reached the
Columbia Eiver, the mighty stream that
wends across these wheat fields, deep down
in its channel, so deep that the use of its

26

waters for purposes of irrigation seems
almost hopeless. The winds .that blow
across the plateau may solve the question.
Seattle is a marvel in the way of city
building. It is growing in every direction
and in every way. Located on a great in-
land sea, in sight of the mountains and
blest with a climate of wonderful even-
ness, at the end of the great transconti-
nental railways and where the large ves-
sels are loaded and unloaded for the
orient and the coastwise trade, the des-
tiny of this city can hardly be overdrawn.
Seattle has absorbed the major energies
of the American northwest. The men who
founded the city laid out its streets in al-
most impossible places, but modern engi-
neering is cutting down the hills and filling
up the hollows. There is no end to the
enterprise of the people in these respects.
Every breath one breathes in Seattle is a
city breath. Men from the prairies of
Iowa have become city builders in Seattle.
Industrial reverses may overtake them,
they likely will, and their winters are said
to be atrociously foggy and wet, but they
are going to make Seattle a place of which
all Americans will be proud, one of the
great commercial cities of the Pacific
Ocean.

27

VI

SAN FBANCISCO, August 24: After
spending a few days in Seattle we
started southward, with Los Ange-
les as the end of our journeying in that
direction. Tacoma has been out-distanced
by Seattle, but it is itself a great and
growing city. Portland, in Oregon, is a
city of older appearances than Seattle. It
has more leisure and more culture and,
perhaps, more realized riches. It has a
great river, mountains around it and the
ocean only a few miles away. Portland
is building for the future and the growth of
Pacific Ocean commerce is in the dreams
of all the business men.

On the way to San Francisco we rode up
the Eogue Eiver valley, which we found not
equal to its fame, and around Mount Shas-
ta, grand and glorious in the sunshine that
fell around its snow-covered peak. The
next morning we were in the wheat belt of
California, the wonderful Sacramento Val-

28

ley. In August it is barren enough, noth-
ing green in it except the fields of alfalfa,
an occasional plum orchard and the won-
derful live oaks scattered over the land-
scapes, always with the range of mountains
in the perspective. Wheat growing in these
valleys has about reached its limit. The
continual cropping has left the soil impov-
erished and there is talk of cutting up the
big ranches into individual small farms,
watered artificially. What there may come
out of this form of development is prob-
lematical. Some persons who had lived in
the valley assured us that the heat is often
so intense that it scalds the fruit on the
trees. On the western slope of the coast
range the climate is much better for fruit
and also for gardening. Incidentally, it
may be remarked that the American is
hardly the race that will develop this form
of intensive farming. They want to do
things on a bigger scale and they shun the
manual labor that is necessary to make it
successful. Portugese colonies are said to
be prospering in the culture of fruit and
the Japanese also are making headway.
They are willing to do such work and to
do it for wages that are not considered
adequate by Americans. Under present

29

conditions nothing seems to me more hope-
less than the establishment of fruit farms,
by American farmers from the Mississippi
Valley, in the valley of the Sacramento,
the Eogue Eiver or even the Yakima and
the Yellowstone.

San Francisco has recovered marvelous-
ly from the earthquake and the fire. It is
a city in the process of rebuilding and the
rebuilding is all along greater and better
lines. Old Chinatown is no longer a city
of rookeries, but of substantial brick and
steel, with shops that would do credit to
any city. The haunts of vice are fewer
and the old devotees of oriental vices com-
plain bitterly that the "town" has lost its
"atmosphere." If it has, it is so much for
the better. San Francisco has been ham-
pered and handicapped, but its business
men are striving to retain the commerce
of the Pacific for which so many other
cities are now striving and for which Seat-
tle has made so much headway.

30

vn

LOS ANGELES, August 27: At San
Francisco our party was broken up.
Mr. Jones and I proceeded to Los
Angeles, while Mr. and Mrs. Pope elected
to linger longer in that city and to make
many breaks in their journey, to visit the
seaside resorts.

Southern California in August is not an
inviting place. There is drouth, and dust.
The famed orchards are simply patches of
trees in plowed ground, the trees covered
with dust as well as with ripening fruit.
When we think of orchards at home, we
think of beautiful plats of grass, with trees.
But that is not the California idea. They
are far from being sylvan dreams. They
are places for hard work and, from all re-
ports, meager incomes. To pick and pack
peaches for distant markets is laborious
and hazardous. The vineyards were filled
with distress over grapes at six dollars a
ton. But in the real estate offices in Los

31

Angeles, rosier views of fruit growing were
to be had and that freely. Los Angeles is
city mad. They have done wonders and
they think of the future without dismay.
All things seem possible to the promoters.
On the one side they have ' l the back coun-
try " where the products are going to en-
rich all the people and on the other side
they have the ocean on which they are
going to carry the commerce of the orient,
all paying tribute to Los Angeles. The
ocean, at Long Beach and other points is
beautiful, restful and invigorating, but the
great ships have found no harbors in the
vicinity of Los Angeles. The harbors must
be made artificially and the commerce must
be wrested away from San Francisco, Port-
land and Seattle and Tacoma. It will be
a great struggle for supremacy. No Amer-
ican can ride down this great Pacific coast
line without feelings of pride in the devel-
opments of this western country. It is all
American, intensely American. They call
it the Golden West, but the man who has
to work for a living finds the conditions no
easier here than "back east." In many
places he finds it harder, for he has Japan-
ese competition and the climate of which
they boast so much makes men lazy.

32

vni

EL TOVAR, Grand Canyon, Arizona,
September 3: We left Los An-
geles yesterday morning. It was
without any regrets that we turned our
faces homeward. California in September
has no charms that can be compared with
those of September in Iowa.

From Los Angeles to San Bernardino is
a matter of two hours, through the San
Gabriel Valley, one of the famous valleys
of the state. We were rather disappoint-
ed. Where we had expected to see an un-
broken succession of cultivated groves and
gardens, we found half of the land still in
sage brush. Like most of the far west,
the land is cultivated in spots only. They
said there was not enough water for all
the fields. After leaving San Bernardino
we went through a mountain pass and
emerged, early in the afternoon, on the
fringes of the Mojave desert, perhaps the
dreariest area on the American continent.

33

Hundreds of miles of utter barrenness!
The famous Death Valley, 400 feet below
the top of the ocean, is part of this desert.
It is on this journey that one learns the
value of water. Water, the great alchem-
ist, the creator and sustainer of life. How
men and women follow the water, here in
the semi-arid west! There is no place in
the mountains where a bit of a stream
trickles down that human beings are not
found. A little house, a little garden, and
a cow, all gathered about that bit of water
which is all of life to them. In these re-
gions water is everything and even real
estate men do not sell land, but water.
A hot, dusty, disagreeable ride this is,
through the Mojave desert. Nothing of
the kind could be worse. We were favor-
ed, too, for all afternoon thunder clouds
were toying with mountain peaks, black
clouds and vivid lightning and the deep
reverberations of thunder — all so sugges-
tive of copious falls of water, but only once
did our train succeed in overtaking one of
these showers. And of what use is a
shower in a desert?

We retired for the night, after we had
passed the Needles, on the Colorado Eiver,
between California and Arizona. When

34

we arose in the morning we were in a green
country again. The desert had faded away
and trees and flowers had come in again.
Strange freak of nature, that the clouds
should pass over the intervening desert and
drop their moisture in central Arizona,
where July and August are the rainy
months of the year. It was good to see the
trees again, the big trees, and the grass
and the flowers in the green fields. Our
train reached Williams early in the morn-
ing. From Williams it is sixty miles to
the rim of the Canyon, a side journey which
one can make in the comfort of a Pullman
car. I had heard so much about the Grand
Canyon that I was afraid to look at it,
though now within a stone's throw of it —
afraid of being disappointed. The disillu-
sionments had been so many on this west-
ern journey, so many things had proved to
be less than they had been reported in the
guide books and in the letters of travelers
that I was minded to save one dreamed
of great thing from the wrecks of travel,
at least a little while longer. So we sat
down to breakfast first — the Grand Can-
yon would wait.

It was a beautiful morning, the heavens
filled with sunshine, with just enough of

35

autumn in it to give it a dreamy effect.
Fifty steps from the hotel brought us to
the rim of the canyon. Those fifty steps
took one into a new world. Unlike moun-
tains and oceans, unlike anything else in
the world, is this first view of the great
gorge which is called the Grand Canyon
of the Colorado Eiver. In that first mo-
ment one is bewildered — and still disap-
pointed. One had anticipated a more in-
stantaneous grandeur. But what is a first
look here? Nothing, we learned after-
wards. It is nothing more than a blind-
ing of the eyes, a numbing of the senses.
Before one lies an unutterable immensity
of things that is appalling. You think you
see everything, and yet you see nothing.
You simply realize that you are looking
on something that is beyond you, out of
your grasp, out of your reach, beyond your
comprehension. There is a certain dizzi-
ness in the air that you look through. The
earth has suddenly opened up before you
and instead of seeing mountains lifted in
the air you see them in the earth beneath
you. Everything is at first without form
and void. It is a dream, a fantasy of the
mind. But as you linger and look longer,
gradually things begin to assume forms

36

and shapes and they begin to be real. Ob-
jects begin to express themselves in colors
also, in great masses of colors, all colors
and all variations of all colors. It is a
creation that is going on before you. The
void begins to be filled with all manner of
formations. It is some such hour as when
God said, "Let there be light, and there
was light. " In those first moments we are
present at another creation, and it is a
creation, that is enacted for every one who
comes to partake of the glories of this can-
yon. To attempt to describe it further
would be like trying to weave a garland
of roses around a star.

The learned of the world, the poets, the
painters and the writers have lingered on
this same rim, not for a day, but for weeks,
charmed, fascinated, bewildered, enthrall-
ed, but without being able to reproduce
either in colors or in words what they saw.
Each one has picked up a bit of color,
where there are oceans of color. The sci-
entist knows that through countless ages
the waters of the Colorado Eiver have cut
this gorge into the earth, through the solid
rock and the drifting sand alike. It is a
mile deep, thirteen miles from rim to rim
and over two hundred miles long. At the

37

bottom of the gorge flows the creator of
this wonderful masterpiece of nature, the
Colorado Eiver. It is a dashing, roaring
river, maddened in its fury to get to the
level of the ocean, through unnumbered ob-
structions, but of all the fury with which
it lashes its sides, there is not a murmur
that reaches you standing at the rim of the
canyon — the river is a mile below you and
six miles away. The deathlike stillness of
dead ages hangs over the canyon. Before
Christ was, before Adam was, this work
was completed. Still a mighty river, in
those primeval days the Colorado must
have been infinitely mightier to have re-
moved the mountains that stood in its
course. To wear away the solid stone, dis-
integrate it and, in solution, to carry it
with its own waters to the ocean, that was
the work that the Colorado Eiver had to
perform to make this bed for itself. In the
Mojave desert the thought came to us, how
precious is water, the life of the world;
here the thought comes to us, how mighty
are the waters when they are assembled
together, the might of the world. There
glistening in the rainbow above the barren
mountain peaks ; here roaring in their fury,

38

dark and mirky and foreboding at the bot-
tom of the gorge.

As at the Yellowstone Canyon, so here
every step brings a new view of the canyon.
It is not the same from any two points of
observation. Of its mere immensity one
can form no adequate idea. The opposite
side looks hardly a mile off, but it is thir-
teen miles, in fact. All of Pike's Peak
might be tumbled into it and hardly make
a dam to hold the waters back. In the
drowsiness of the afternoon's sun I thought
one of the mountains that stand in the
bottom of the canyon looked like a huge
pulpit. I thought I saw terrace rise above
terrace, up the slopes, and fifty miles up
and down the river. I thought how all
the nations of the earth might be gathered
there and seated, and how an archangel
might speak to them and be heard by all.
Not only terraces, but temples, pagodas,
castles, battleships, everything that one has
ever seen that is great or grand seems to be
reproduced in this canyon, in such varied
ways has the water chiseled itself upon the
rocks. Every conceivable form of things,
every imaginable color, has been worked
out in this great gorge. The sun goes down
upon it, throwing the shadows of ragged

39

peaks across yawning chasms, multiplying
the awfulness of things seen. The full
sun can not light the depths of it. In the
darkness of the night one walks on the rim
of this canyon as on the shores of some
unexplored world, a world still in the pro-
cess of creation.

Day after day, little parties of sightseers
go down into the canyon, down Bright An-
gel trail, on the backs of donkeys. It is
thirteen miles by the trail and then the
river is still far below them, so far that
they can hardly hear the noise it makes
between its rocky banks.

Many had said that when one has seen
the Grand Canyon he has forgotten all
about the Canyon of the Yellowstone. But
I did not find it so. Nothing can ever
make me forget the Canyon of the Yellow-
stone. The two canyons are so different
and so distinct that comparisons are not
possible, but contrasts are. In the Grand
Canyon the colors are heavier; in the
Yellowstone Canyon the colors have the
brightness of the butterfly. The one is
compact, the other immense. The one is
definite, conceivable and comprehensible;
the other indefinite, inconceivable and in-
comprehensible. The one produces the sen-

40

sations of nearness and clearness ; the other
of aloofness and vagueness. The one is
like a beautiful woman arrayed in many
colors; the other like an angel clothed in
austerity.

When one has seen these two canyons,
the west has nothing more to offer him in
the way of scenery. They sum up all the
wonders that nature has wrought in these
cyclopean regions of the continent. One
wants to see them again, to see them many
times again. In the last year of his life
he might desire to take a last look at them.
And, if in the providence of the theolo-
gians, we are all translated into angels, for
one I shall often be tempted to desert the
glories celestial for these glories terrestial,
to hover over the scene where the Yellow-
stone Kiver tumbles over its precipices into
the gorgeous depths below and where the
Colorado Eiver roars at the bottom of the
canyon which is the creation of its own
might and fury.

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