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Titan of Chasms 
 
 The Grand Canyon of Arizona 
 
 THE TITAN, OF CHASMS 
 
 By C. A. HIGGIXS 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC EXPLORER 
 
 By J. W. POWELL 
 
 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD 
 
 By CHAS. F. LTJMMIS 
 
 INFORMATION FOR TOURISTS 
 
 Fifteenth Thousand 
 
 PASSENGER DEPARTMENT 
 
 THE SANTA FE 
 
 CHICAGO, 1902 
 
/ I 05 
 
 • H64- 
 
 V 
 
THE TITAN OF CHASMS 
 
 <BY C. A. HIGGINS 
 
 Its History 
 
 The Colorado is one of the great rivers of North America. Formed in 
 Southern Utah by the confluence of the Green and Grand, it intersects the 
 northwestern corner of Arizona, and, becoming the eastern boundary of 
 Nevada and California, flows southward until it reaches tidewater in the Gulf 
 of California, Mexico. It drains a territory of 500,000 square miles, and, 
 traced back to the rise of its principal source, is 2,000 miles long. At two 
 points, Needles and Yuma on the California boundary, it is crossed by a rail- 
 road. Elsewhere its course lies far from Caucasian settlements and far from 
 the routes of common travel, in the heart of a vast region fenced on the one 
 hand by arid plains or deep forests and on the other by formidable mountains. 
 
 The early Spanish explorers first reported it to the civilized world in 1540, 
 two separate expeditions becoming acquainted with the river for a compara- 
 tively short distance above its mouth, and another, journeying from the Mold 
 Pueblos northwestward across the desert, obtaining the first view of the Big- 
 Canyon, failing in every effort to descend the canyon wall, and spying the 
 river only from afar. 
 
 Again, in 1776, a Spanish priest traveling southward through Utah struck 
 off from the Virgin River to the southeast and found a practicable crossing at 
 a point that still bears the name " Vado de los Padres." 
 
 For more than eighty years thereafter the Big Canyon remained unvisited 
 except by the Indian, the Mormon herdsman, and the trapper, although the 
 Sitgreaves expedition of 1851, journeying westward, struck the river about 
 150 miles above Yuma, and Lieutenant Whipple in 1854 made a survey for a 
 practicable railroad route along the thirty-fifth parallel, where the Santa Fe 
 Pacific has since been constructed. 
 
 The establishment of military posts in New Mexico and Utah having made 
 desirable the use of a waterway for the cheap transportation of supplies, in 
 1857 the War Department dispatched an expedition in charge of Lieutenant 
 Ives to explore the Colorado as far from its mouth as navigation should be 
 found practicable. Ives ascended the river in a specially constructed steam- 
 boat to the head of Black Canyon, a few miles below the confluence of the 
 
Virgin River in Nevada, where further navigation became impossible; then, 
 returning to the Needles, he set off across the country toward the northeast. 
 He reached the Big Canyon at Diamond Creek and at Cataract Creek in the 
 spring of 1858, and from the latter point made a wide southward detour around 
 the San Francisco Peaks, thence northeastward to the Moki Pueblos, thence 
 eastward to Fort Defiance, and so back to civilization. 
 
 That is the history of the explorations of the Colorado up to forty years 
 ao-o. Its exact course was unknown for many hundred miles, even its origin 
 being a matter of conjecture. It was difficult to approach within a distance of 
 two or three miles from the channel, while descent to the river's edge could be 
 hazarded only at wide intervals, inasmuch as it lay in an appalling fissure at 
 the foot of seemingly impassable cliff terraces that led down from the border- 
 ing plateau; and to attempt its navigation was to court death. It was known 
 in a general way that the entire channel between Nevada and Utah was of 
 the same titanic character, reaching its culmination nearly midway in its 
 course through Arizona. 
 
 In 1869 Maj. J. W. Powell undertook the exploration of the river with nine 
 men and four boats, starting from Green River City, on the Green River, in 
 Utah. The project met with the most urgent remonstrance from those who 
 
 The Colorado, Foot of fir/-/// Angel Trail. 
 
were best acquainted with the region, including the Indians, who maintained 
 that boats could not possibly live in any one of a score of rapids and falls 
 known to them, to say nothing of the vast unknown stretches in which at any 
 moment a Niagara might be disclosed. It was also currently believed that for 
 hundreds of miles the river disappeared wholly beneath the surface of the earth. 
 Powell launched his flotilla on May 24th, and on August 30th landed at the 
 mouth of the Virgin River, more than one thousand miles by the river channel 
 from the place of starting, minus two boats and four men. ( )ne of the men had 
 left the expedition by way of an Indian reservation agency before reaching 
 Arizona, and three, after holding out against unprecedented terrors for many 
 weeks, had finally become daunted, choosing to encounter the perils of an 
 unknown desert rather than to brave any longer the frightful menaces of that 
 Stygian torrent. These three, unfortunately making their appearance on the 
 plateau at a time when a recent depredation was colorably chargeable upon 
 them, were killed by Indians, their story of having come thus tar down the 
 river in boats being wholly discredited by their captors. 
 
 Powell's journal of the trip is a fascinating tale, written in a compact and 
 modest style, which, in spite of its reticence, tells an epic story of purest 
 heroism. It definitely established the scene of his exploration as the most 
 wonderful geological and spectacular phenomenon known to mankind, and 
 justified the name which had been bestowed upon it — The Grand Canyon — 
 sublimest of gorges; Titan of chasms. Many scientists have since visited it, 
 and, in the aggregate, a large number of unprofessional lovers of nature; but 
 until a few years ago no adequate facilities were provided for the general 
 sight-seer, and the world's most stupendous panorama was known principally 
 through report, by reason of the discomforts and difficulties of the trip, which 
 deterred all except the most indefatigable enthusiasts. Even its geographical 
 location is the subject of widespread misapprehension. 
 
 Its title has been pirated for application to relatively insignificant canyons 
 in distant parts of the country, and thousands of tourists have been led to 
 believe that they saw the Grand Canyon, when, in fact, they looked upon a 
 totally different scene, between which and the real Grand Canyon there is no 
 more comparison "than there is between the Alleghanies or Trosachs and the 
 Himalayas." 
 
 There is but one Grand Canyon. Nowhere in the world has its like been 
 found. 
 
 jis Seen From the Rim 
 
 vStolid, indeed, is he who can front the awful scene and view its unearthly 
 splendor of color and form without quaking knee or tremulous breath. An 
 inferno, swathed in soft celestial fires; a whole chaotic under-world, just 
 emptied of primeval floods and waiting for a new creative word; eluding all 
 sense of perspective or dimension, outstretching the faculty of measurement, 
 overlapping the confines of definite apprehension- a boding, terrible thing, 
 unflinchingly real, yet spectral as a dream. The beholder is at first unimpressed 
 by any detail; he is overwhelmed by the ensemble of a stupendous panorama, 
 a thousand scpiare miles in extent, that lies wholly beneath the eye, as if he 
 stood upon a mountain peak instead of the level brink of a fearful chasm in the 
 plateau, whose opposite shore is thirteen miles away. A labyrinth of huge 
 architectural forms, endlessly varied in design, fretted" with ornamental devices, 
 festooned with laccdike webs formed of talus from the upper cliffs and painted 
 with every color known to the palette in pure transparent tones of marvelous 
 delicacy^. Never was picture more harmonious, never flower more exquisitely 
 
The River and tin 
 
 beautiful. It flashes instant communication of all that architecture and paint- 
 ing and music for a thousand years have gropingly striven to express. It is the 
 soul of Michael Angelo and of Beethoven. 
 
 A canyon, truly, but not after the accepted type. An intricate system of 
 canyons, rather, each subordinate to the river channel in the midst, which in 
 its turn is subordinate to the whole effect. That river channel, the profoundest 
 depth, and actually more than 6,000 feet below the point of view, is in seeming 
 a rather insignificant trench, attracting the eye more by reason of its somber 
 tone and mysterious suggestion than by any appreciable characteristic of a 
 chasm. It is perhaps five miles distant in a straight line, and its uppermost 
 rims are nearly 4,000 feet beneath the observer, whose measuring capacity is 
 entirely inadequate to the demand made by such magnitudes. One can not 
 believe the distance to be more than a mile as the crow flies, before descending 
 the wall or attempting some other form of actual measurement. 
 
 Mere brain knowledge counts for little against the illusion under which 
 the organ of vision is here doomed to labor. Yonder cliff, darkening from 
 white to gray, yellow, and brown as your glance descends, is taller than the 
 Washington Monument. The Auditorium in Chicago would not cover one-half 
 its perpendicular span. Yet it does not greatly impress you. You idly toss a 
 pebble toward it, and are surprised to note how far the missile falls short. 
 By and by you will learn that it is a good half mile distant, and when you go 
 
 6 
 
down the trail you will gain an abiding sense of its real proportions. Yet, 
 relatively, it is an unimportant detail of the scene. Were Vulcan to cast it 
 bodily into the chasm directly beneath your feet, it would pass for a bowlder, 
 if, indeed, it were discoverable to the unaided eye. 
 
 Yet the immediate chasm itself is only the first step of a long terrace that 
 leads down to the innermost gorge and the river. Roll a heavy stone to the 
 rim and let it go. It falls sheer the height of a church or an Eiffel Tower, 
 according to the point selected for such pastime, and explodes like a bomb on 
 a projecting ledge. If, happily, any considerable fragments remain, they bound 
 •onward like elastic balls, leaping in wild parabola from point to point, snapping 
 trees like straws; bursting, crashing, thundering down the declivities until they 
 make a last plunge over the brink of a void; and then there comes languidly 
 up the cliff sides a faint, distant roar, and your bowlder that had withstood the 
 buffets of centuries lies scattered as wide as Wycliffe's ashes, although the 
 final fragment has lodged only a little way, so to speak, below the rim. Such 
 performances are frequently given in these amphitheaters without human aid, 
 by the mere undermining of the rain, or perhaps it is here that Sisyphus 
 rehearses his unending task. Often in the silence of night some tremendous 
 fragment has been heard crashing from terrace to terrace with shocks like 
 thunder peal. 
 
 The spectacle is so symmetrical, and so completely excludes the outside 
 world and its accustomed standards, it is with difficulty one can acquire any 
 notion of its immensity. Were it half as deep, half as broad, it would be no 
 less bewildering, so utterly does it baffle human grasp. 
 
 The Trip to the TK.Wer 
 
 Only by descending into the canyon may one arrive at anything like 
 comprehension of its proportions, and the descent can not be too urgently 
 commended to every visitor who is sufficiently robust to bear a reasonable 
 amount of fatigue. There are four paths down the southern wall of the canyon 
 in the granite gorge district — Mystic Spring, Bright Angel, Berry's and Hance's 
 trails. The following account of a descent of the old Hance trail will serve to 
 indicate the nature of such an experience to-day, except that the trip may now 
 be safely made with greater comfort. 
 
 For the first two miles it is a sort of Jacob's ladder, zigzagging at an unre- 
 lenting pitch. At the end of two miles a comparatively gentle slope is reached, 
 known as the blue limestone level, some 2,500 feet below the rim, that is to say 
 — for such figures have to be impressed objectively upon the mind — five times 
 the height of St. Peter's, the Pyramid of Cheops, or the Strasburg Cathedral; 
 eight times the height of the Bartholdi Statue of Liberty; eleven times the 
 height of Bunker Hill Monument. Looking back from this level the huge 
 picturesque towers that border the rim shrink to pigmies and seem to crown 
 a perpendicular wall, unattainably far in the sky. Yet less than one-half the 
 descent has been made. 
 
 Overshadowed by sandstone of chocolate hue the way grows gloomy and 
 foreboding, and the gorge narrows. The traveler stops a moment beneath a 
 slanting cliff 500 feet high, where there is an Indian grave and pottery scattered 
 about. A gigantic niche has been worn in the face of this cavernous cliff, 
 which, in recognition of its fancied Egyptian character, was named the Temple 
 of Sett by the painter, Thomas Moran. 
 
 A little beyond this temple it becomes necessary to abandon the animals. 
 The river is still a mile and a half distant. The way narrows now to a mere 
 notch, where two wagons could barely pass, and the granite begins to tower 
 
gloomily overhead, for we have dropped below the sandstone and have entered 
 the archsean — a frowning black rock, streaked, veined, and swirled with vivid 
 red and white, smoothed and polished by the rivulet and beautiful as a mosaic. 
 Obstacles are encountered in the form of steep, interposing crags, past which 
 the brook has found a way, but over which the pedestrian must clamber. 
 After these lesser difficulties come sheer descents, which at present are passed 
 by the aid of ropes. 
 
 The last considerable drop is a 40-foot bit by the side of a pretty cascade, 
 where there are just enough irregularities in the wall to give toe-hold. The 
 narrowed cleft becomes exceedingly wayward in its course, turning abruptly 
 to right and left, and working down into twilight depth. It is very still. At 
 every turn one looks to see the embouchure upon the river, anticipating the 
 sudden shock of the unintercepted roar of waters. When at last this is reached, 
 over a final downward clamber, the traveler stands upon a sandy rift confronted 
 by nearly vertical walls many hundred feet high, at whose base a black torrent 
 pitches in a giddying onward slide that gives him momentarily the sensation of 
 slipping into an abyss. 
 
 I Part] 
 
 Bright Ansrel Trail. 
 
With so little labor may one come to the Colorado River in the heart of its 
 most tremendous channel, and gaze upon a sight that heretofore has had fewer 
 witnesses than have the wilds of Africa. Dwarfed by such prodigious mountain 
 shores, which rise immediately from the water at an angle that would deny 
 footing to a mountain sheep, it is not easy to estimate confidently the width and 
 volume of the river. Choked by the stubborn granite at this point, its width is 
 probablv between 250 and 300 feet, its velocity fifteen miles an hour, and its 
 volume and turmoil equal to the Whirlpool Rapids of Niagara. Its rise in time 
 of heavy rain is rapid and appalling, for the walls shed almost instantly all the 
 water that falls upon them. Drift is lodged in the crevices thirty feet overhead. 
 
 For only a few hundred yards is the tortuous stream visible, but its effect 
 upon the senses is perhaps the greater for that reason. Issuing as from a 
 mountain side, it slides with oily smoothness for a space and suddenly breaks 
 into violent waves that comb back against the current and shoot unexpectedly 
 here and there, while the volume sways tide-like from side to side, and long 
 curling breakers form and hold their outline lengthwise of the shore, despite 
 the seeminglv irresistible velocity of the water. The river is laden with drift 
 (huge tree trunks), which it tosses like chips in its terrible play. 
 
 Standing upon that shore one can barely credit Powell's achievement, in 
 spite of its absolute authenticity. Never was a more magnificent self-reliance 
 displayed than by the man who not only undertook the passage of Colorado 
 River but won his way. And after viewing a fraction of the scene at close 
 range, one can not hold it to the discredit of three of his companions that they 
 abandoned the undertaking not far below this point. The fact that those who 
 persisted got through alive is hardly more astonishing than that any should 
 have had the hardihood to persist. For it could not have been alone the priva- 
 tion, the infinite toil, the unending suspense in constant menace of death that 
 assaulted their courage ; these they had looked for; it was rather the unlifted 
 gloom of those tartarean depths, the unspeakable horrors of an endless valley 
 of the shadow of death, in which every step was irrevocable. 
 
 Returning to the spot where the animals were abandoned, camp is made 
 for the night. Next morning the way is retraced. Not the most fervid pictures 
 of a poet's fancy could transcend the glories then revealed in the depths of the 
 canyon; inky shadows, pale gildings of lofty spires, golden splendors of sun 
 beating full on facades of red and yellow, obscurations of distant peaks by veils 
 of transient shower, glimpses of white towers half drowned in purple haze, 
 suffusions of rosy light blended in reflection from a hundred tinted walls. 
 Caught up to exalted emotional heights the beholder becomes unmindful of 
 fatigue. He mounts on wings. He drives the chariot of the sun. 
 
Having returned to the plateau, it will be found that the descent into the 
 canyon has bestowed a sense of intimacy that almost amounts to a mental grasp 
 of the scene. The terrific deeps that part the walls of hundreds of castles and 
 turrets of mountainous bulk may be approximately located in barely discernible 
 pen-strokes of detail, and will be apprehended mainly through the memory of 
 upward looks from the bottom, while towers and obstructions and yawning 
 fissures that were deemed events of the trail will be wholly indistinguishable, 
 although they are known to lie somewhere flat beneath the eye. The compar- 
 ative insignificance of what are termed grand sights in other parts of the world 
 is now clearly revealed. Twenty Yosemites might lie unperceived anywhere 
 below. Niagara, that Mecca of marvel seekers, would not here possess the 
 dignity of a trout stream. Your companion, standing at a short distance on 
 the verge, is an insect to the eye. 
 
 Still, such particulars can not long hold the attention, for the panorama is 
 the real overmastering charm. It is never twice the same. Although you 
 think you have spelt out every temple and peak and escarpment, as the angle 
 of sunlight changes there begins a ghostly advance of colossal forms from the 
 farther side, and what you had taken to be the ultimate wall is seen to be made 
 up of still other isolated sculptures, revealed now for the first time by 
 silhouetting shadows. The scene incessantly changes, flushing and fading, 
 advancing into crystalline clearness, retiring into slumberous haze. 
 
 Should it chance to have rained heavily in the night, next morning the 
 canyon is completely filled with fog. As the sun mounts, the curtain of mist 
 suddenly breaks into cloud fleeces, and while you gaze these fleeces rise and 
 dissipate, leaving the canyon bare. At once around the bases of the lowest 
 cliffs white puffs begin to appear, creating a scene of unparalleled beauty as 
 their dazzling cumuli swell and rise and their number multiplies, until once 
 more they overflow the rim, and it is as if you stood on some land's end looking 
 down upon a formless void. Then quickly comes the complete dissipation, and 
 again the marshaling in the depths, the upward advance, the total suffusion and 
 the speedy vanishing, repeated over and over until the warm walls have 
 expelled their saturation. 
 
 Long may the visitor loiter upon the verge, powerless to shake loose from 
 the charm, tirelessly intent upon the silent transformations until the sun is low 
 in the west. Then the canyon sinks into mysterious purple shadow, the far 
 Shinumo Altar is tipped with a golden ray, and against a leaden horizon the 
 long line of the Echo Cliffs reflects a soft brilliance of indescribable beauty, a 
 light that, elsewhere, surely never was on sea or land. Then darkness falls, 
 and should there be a moon, the scene in part revives in silver light, a thousand 
 spectral forms projected from inscrutable gloom; dreams of mountains, as in 
 their sleep they brood on things eternal. 
 
THE SCIENTIFIC EXPLORER 
 
 BY J. W. POWELL 
 
 The IVes and Wheeler Expeditions 
 
 In the fall of 1857 Lieutenant Ives, of the engineer corps of the army, 
 ascended the Colorado River on a trip of exploration with a little steamer 
 called the Explorer; he went as far as the mouth of the Rio Virgin. Falling- 
 back down river a few miles, Lieutenant Ives met a pack train which had 
 followed him up the bank of the stream. Here he disembarked, and on the 
 24th of March started with a land party to explore the eastern bank of the 
 river ; making a long detour he ascended the plateau through which the Grand 
 Canyon is cut, and in an adventurous journey he obtained views of the canyon 
 along its lower course. On this trip J. S. Newberry was the geologist, and 
 to him we are indebted for the first geological explanation of the canyon and 
 the description of the high plateau through which it is formed. Doctor New- 
 berry was not only an able geologist, but he was also a graphic writer, and his 
 description of the canyon as far as it was seen by him is a classic in geology. 
 
 In 1869 Lieutenant Wheeler was sent out by the chief engineer of the army 
 to explore the Grand Canyon from below. In the spring he succeeded in reach- 
 ing the mouth of Diamond Creek, which had previously been seen by Doctor 
 Newberry in 1858. Mr. Gilbert was the geologist of this expedition, and his 
 studies of the canyon region during this and subsequent years have added 
 greatly to our knowledge of this land of wonders. 
 
 Major Powell's Several Trips 
 
 In this same year I essayed to explore the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, 
 together with the upper canyons of that stream and the great canyons of the 
 lower portion of Green River. For this purpose I employed four rowboats 
 and made the descent from what is now Green River station through the 
 whole course of canyons to the mouth of the Rio Virgin, a distance of more 
 than a thousand miles. 
 
From Kaibab Plateau, Looking South. 
 
In the spring- of 1S70 I again started with three boats and descended 
 the river to the Crossing- of the Fathers, where I met a pack train and went out 
 with a party of men to explore ways down into the Grand Canyon from the 
 north, and devoted the summer, fall, winter, and following spring to this under- 
 taking. 
 
 In the summer of 187 1 I returned to the rowboats and descended through 
 Marble Canyon to the Grand Canyon of Arizona, and then through the 
 greater part of the Grand Canyon itself. Subsequent years were then given to 
 exploration of the country adjacent to the Grand Canyon. On these trips Mr. 
 Gilbert, the geologist, who had been with Lieutenant Wheeler, and Capt. C. E. 
 Button, were my geological companions. On the second boat trip, and during 
 all the subsequent years of exploration in this region, Prof. A. H. Thompson 
 was my geographical companion, assisted by a number of topographical engi- 
 neers. 
 
 In 18X2 Mr. C. D. Walcott, as my assistant in the United States Geological 
 Survey, went with me into the depths of the Grand Canyon. We descended 
 from the summit of the Kaibab Plateau on the north by a trail which we built 
 down a side canyon in a direction toward the mouth of the Little Colorado 
 River. The descent was made in the fall, and a small party of men was 
 left with Mr. Walcott in this region of stupendous depths to make a study of the 
 geology of an important region of labyrinthian gorges. Here, with his party, 
 he was shut up for the winter, for it was known when we left him that snows 
 on the summit of the plateau would prevent his return to the upper region 
 before the sun should melt them the next spring. Mr. Walcott is now the 
 Director of the United States Geological Survey. 
 
 After this year I made no substantial additions to my geologic and scenic 
 knowledge of the Grand Canyon, though I afterward studied the archaeology to 
 the south and east throughout a wide region of ruined pueblos and cliff 
 dwellings. 
 
 Since my first trip in boats many others have essayed to follow me, 
 and year by year such expeditions have met with disaster ; some hardy adven- 
 turers are buried on the banks of the Green, and the graves of others are 
 scattered at intervals along the course of the Colorado. 
 
 In 1889 the brave F. M. Brown lost his life. But finally a party of railroad 
 engineers, led by R. B. Stanton, started at the head of Marble Canyon and 
 made their way down the river as they extended a survey for a railroad along 
 its course. 
 
 Other adventurous travelers have visited portions of the Grand Canyon 
 region, and Mr. G. Wharton James has extended his travels widely over the 
 region in the interest of popular science and the new literature created in the 
 last decades of the nineteenth century. And now I once more return to a 
 reminiscent account of the Grand Canyon, for old men love to talk of the 
 past. 
 
 The Plateau Region 
 
 The Grand Canyon of Arizona and the Marble Canyon constitute one great 
 gorge carved by a mighty river through a high plateau. On the northeast and 
 north a line of cliffs face this plateau by a bold escarpment of rock. Climb 
 these cliffs and you must ascend from 800 to 1,000 feet, but on their summit you 
 will stand upon a plateau stretching away to the north. Now turn to face the 
 south and you will overlook the cliff and what appears to be a valley below. 
 From the foot of the cliff the country rises to the south to a great plateau through 
 which the Marble and the Grand canyons are carved. This plateau terminates 
 
abruptly on the west by the Grand Wash Cliffs, which is a high escarpment 
 caused by a " fault " (as the geologist calls it), that is, the strata of sandstone 
 and limestone are broken off, and to the west of the fracture they are dropped 
 down several thousand feet, so that standing upon the edge of the plateau 
 above the Grand Wash Cliffs you may look off to the west over a vast region of 
 desert from which low volcanic mountains rise that seem like purple mounds in 
 sand-clad lands. 
 
 On the east the great plateau breaks down in a very irregular way into, the 
 valley of the Little Colorado, and where the railroad ascends the plateau from the 
 east it passes over picturesque canyons that run down into the Little Colorado. 
 On the south the plateau is merged into the great system of mountains that 
 stand in Southern Arizona. Where the plateau ends and the mountains begin is 
 not a well-defined line. The plateau through which the Grand Canyon is cut 
 is a region of great scenic interest. Its surface is from six to more than eight 
 thousand feet above the level of the sea. The Grand Plateau is composed of 
 many subsidiary plateaus, each one having its own peculiar and interesting 
 feature. 
 
 The Kaibab Plateau, to the northeast of the Grand Canyon, is covered with 
 a pine forest which is intercepted by a few meadows with here and there a 
 pond or lakelet. It is the home of deer and bear. 
 
 To the west is the Shinumo Plateau in which the Shinumo Canyon is 
 carved ; and on the cliffs of this canyon and in the narrow valley along its 
 course the Shinumo ruins are found — the relics of a prehistoric race. 
 
 To the west of the Shinumo Plateau is the Kanab Plateau, with ruins scat- 
 tered over it, and on its northern border the beautiful Mormon town of Kanab 
 is found, and the canyon of Kanab Creek separates the Shinumo Plateau from 
 the Kanab Plateau. It begins as a shallow gorge and gradually increases in 
 depth until it reaches the Colorado River itself, at a depth of more than 
 4,000 feet below the surface. Vast amphitheaters are found in its walls and 
 titanic pinnacles rise from its depths. One Christmas clay I waded up this creek. 
 It was one of the most delightful walks of my life, from a land of flowers to a 
 land of snow. 
 
 To the west of the Kanab Plateau are the Uinkaret Mountains — an 
 immense group of volcanic cones upon a plateau. Some of these cones stand 
 very near the brink of the Grand Canyon and from one of them a flood of 
 basalt was poured into the canyon itself. Not long ago geologically, but 
 rather long when reckoned in years of human history, this flood of lava rolled 
 down the canyon for more than fifty miles, filling it to the depth of two or three 
 hundred feet and diverting the course of the river against one or the other 
 of its banks. Many of the cones are of red cinder, while sometimes the lava is 
 piled up into huge mountains which are covered with forest. To the west 
 of the Uinkaret Mountains spreads the great Shiwits Plateau, crowned by 
 Mount Dellenbough. 
 
 Past the south end of these plateaus runs the Colorado River ; southward 
 through Marble Canyon and in the Grand Canyon, then northwestward past the 
 Kaibab and Shinumo Canyon, then southwestward past the Kanab Plateau, 
 Uinkaret Mountains to the southernmost point of the Shiwits Plateau, and then 
 northwestward to the Grand Wash Cliffs. Its distance in this course is little 
 more than 300 miles — but the 300 miles of river are set on every side 
 with cliffs, buttes, towers, pinnacles, amphitheaters, caves, and terraces, exquis- 
 itely storm-carved and painted in an endless variety of colors. 
 
 The plateau to the south of the Grand Canyon, which we need not describe 
 in parts, is largely covered with a gigantic forest. There are many volcanic 
 
 14 
 
I M --. I 
 
 ,;«. 
 
 Bissell Point and Colorado Rive. 
 
 >ght, 1899, by II. 
 
 mountains and many treeless valleys. In the high forest there are beautiful 
 glades with little stretches of meadow which are spread in summer with a par- 
 terre of flowers of many colors. This upper region is the garden of the world. 
 When I was first there bear, deer, antelope, and wild turkeys abounded, but now 
 they are becoming scarce. Widely scattered throughout the plateau are small 
 canyons, each one a few miles in length and a few hundred feet in depth. 
 Throughout their course cliff-dweller ruins are found. In the highland glades 
 and along the valley, pueblo ruins are widely scattered, but the strangest sights 
 of all the things due to prehistoric man are the cave dwellings that are dug in 
 the tops of cinder cones and the villages that were built in the caves of volcanic 
 cliffs. If now I have succeeded in creating a picture of the plateau I will 
 attempt a brief description of the canyon. 
 
 yiarble Canyon 
 
 Above the Paria the great river runs down a canyon which it has cut 
 through one plateau. On its way it flows with comparative q niet through beauti- 
 ful scenery, with glens that are vast amphitheaters which often overhang great 
 
springs and ponds of water deeply embosomed in the cliffs. From the southern 
 escarpment of this plateau the great Colorado Plateau rises by a comparatively 
 gentle acclivity, and Marble Canyon starts with walls but a few score feet 
 in height until they reach an altitude of about 5,000 feet. On the way the 
 channel is cut into beds of rock of lower geologic horizon, or greater geologic age. 
 These rocks are sandstones and limestones. Some beds are very hard, others 
 are soft and friable. The friable rocks wash out and the harder rocks remain 
 projecting from the walls, so that every wall presents a set of stony shelves. 
 These shelves rise along the wall toward the south as new shelves set in 
 from below. 
 
 In addition to this shelving structure the walls are terraced and the cliffs 
 of the canyon are set back one upon the other. Then these canyon walls are 
 interrupted by side streams which themselves have carved lateral canyons, some 
 small, others large, but all deep. In these side gorges the scenery is varied 
 and picturesque ; deep clefts are seen here and there as you descend the river 
 
 clefts furnished with little streams along which mosses and other plants 
 
 grow. At low water the floor of the great canyon is more or less exposed, and 
 where it flows over limestone rocks beautiful marbles are seen in many colors ; 
 saffron, pink, and blue prevail. Sometimes a facade or wall appears rising ver- 
 tically from the water for thousands of feet. At last the canyon abruptly ends 
 in a confusion of hills beyond which rise towering cliffs, and the group of hills 
 are nestled in the bottom of a valley-like region which is surrounded by cliffs 
 more than a mile in altitude. 
 
 The Grand Canyon 
 
 From here on for many miles the whole character of the canyon changes. 
 First a dike appears ; this is a wall of black basalt crossing the river ; it is 
 of lava thrust up from below through a huge crevice broken in the rock by 
 earthquake agency. On the east the Little Colorado comes ; here it is a river 
 of salt water, and it derives its salt a few miles up the stream. The main Colo- 
 rado flows along the eastern and southern wall. Climbing this for a few hun- 
 dred feet you may look off toward the northwest and gaze at the cliffs of the 
 Kaibab Plateau. 
 
 This is the point where we built a trail down a side canyon where Mr. Wal- 
 cott was to make his winter residence and study of the region ; it is very com- 
 plicated and exhibits a vast series of unconformable rocks of high antiquity. 
 These lower rocks are of many colors ; in large part they are shales. The 
 region, which appears to be composed of bright-colored hills washed naked by 
 the rain, is, in fact, beset with a multitude of winding canyons with their own 
 precipitous walls. It is a region of many canyons in the depths of the Grand 
 Canyon itself. 
 
 In this beautiful region Mr. Walcott, reading the book of geology, lived in 
 a summerland during all of a long winter while the cliffs above were covered 
 with snow which prevented his egress to the world. His companions, three 
 young Mormons, longing for a higher degree of civilization, gazed wistfully at 
 the snow-clad barriers by which they were inclosed. One was a draughtsman, 
 another a herder of his stock, and the third his cook. They afterward told me 
 that it was a long winter of homesickness, and that months dragged away 
 as years, but Mr. Walcott himself had the great book of geology to read, and to 
 him it was a winter of delight. 
 
 A half dozen miles below the basaltic wall the river enters a channel 
 carved in 800 or 1,000 feet of dark gneiss of very hard rock. Here the chan- 
 nel is narrow and very swift and beset with rapids and falls. On the south and 
 
 16 
 
southwest the wall rises abruptly from the water to the summit of the plateau 
 for about 6,000 feet, but across the river 011 the north and west mountains 
 of gneiss and quartzites appear, sometimes rising to the height of a thousand 
 feet. These are mountains in the bottom of a canyon. The buttes and pla- 
 teaus of the inter-canyon region are composed of shales, sandstones, and lime- 
 stones, which give rise to vast architectural shelving and to pinnacles and 
 towers of gigantic proportions, the whole embossed with a marvelously minute 
 system of fretwork carved by the artistic clouds. Looking beyond these 
 mountains, buttes, and plateaus vistas of the walls of the great plateau are seen. 
 From these walls project salients, and deep re-entrant angles appear. 
 
 The whole scene is forever reminding you of mighty architectural pinnacles 
 and towers and balustrades and arches and columns with lattice work and 
 delicate carving. All of these architectural features are sublime by titanic paint- 
 ing in varied hues — pink, red, brown, lavender, gray, blue, and black. In some 
 lights the saffron prevails, in other lights vermilion, and yet in other lights the 
 grays and blacks predominate. At times, and perhaps in rare seasons, clouds 
 and cloudlets form in the canyon below and wander among the side canyons and 
 float higher and higher until they are dissolved in the upper air, or perhaps they 
 accumulate to hide great portions of the landscape. Then through rifts in the 
 clouds vistas of Wonderland are seen. vSuch is that portion of the canyon around 
 the great south bend of the Colorado River past the point of the Kaibab Plateau. 
 
 Jis Seen by the Geologist 
 
 In the last chapter of my book entitled " The Canyons of the Colorado " I 
 have described the Grand Canyon in the following terms : 
 
 The Grand Canyon is a gorge 217 miles in length, through which flows a 
 great river with many storm-born tributaries. It has a winding way, as rivers 
 are wont to have. Its banks are vast structures of adamant, piled up in forms 
 rarely seen in the mountains. 
 
 Down by the river the walls are composed of black gneiss, slates, and schists, 
 all greatly implicated and traversed by dikes of granite. Let this formation lie 
 called the black gneiss. It is usually about 800 feet in thickness. 
 
 Then over the black gneiss are found 800 feet of quartzites, usually in very 
 thin beds of many colors, but exceedingly hard, and ringing under the hammer 
 like phonolite. These beds are dipping and unconformable with the rocks 
 above. While they make but 800 feet of the wall or less they have a geologic 
 thickness of 12,000 feet. Set up a row of books aslant; it is ten inches from the 
 shelf to the top of the line of books, but there may be three feet of the books 
 measured directly through the leaves So these quartzites are aslant, and 
 though of great geologic thickness they make but 800 feet of the wall. Your 
 books may have many-colored bindings and differ greatly in their contents ; so 
 these quartzites vary greatly from place to place along the wall, and in many 
 places they entirely disappear. Let us call this formation the variegated 
 quartzite. 
 
 Above the quartzites there are 500 feet of sandstones. They are of a 
 greenish hue, but are mottled with spots of brown and black by iron stains. 
 They usually stand in a bold cliff, weathered in alcoves. Let this formation be 
 called the cliff sandstone. 
 
 Above the cliff sandstone there are 700 feet of bedded sandstones and lime- 
 stones, which are massive sometimes and sometimes broken into thin strata. 
 These rocks are often weathered in deep alcoves. Let this formation be called 
 the alcove sandstone. 
 
 Over the alcove sandstone there are 1,600 feet of limestone, in many places 
 
-a beautiful marble, as in Marble Canyon. As it appears along the Grand 
 Canyon it is always stained a brilliant red, for immediately over it there are thin 
 seams of iron, and the storms have painted these limestones with pigments from 
 above. Altogether this is the red-wall group. It is chiefly limestone. Let it 
 be called the red-wall limestone. 
 
 Above the red wall there are Soo feet of gray and bright red sandstone, 
 alternating in beds that look like vast ribbons of landscape. Let it be called 
 the banded sandstone. 
 
 And over all, at the top of the wall, is the Aubrey limestone, 1,000 feet in 
 thickness. This Aubrey has much gypsum in it, great beds of alabaster that 
 are pure white in comparison with the great body of limestone below. In the 
 same limestone there are enormous beds of chert, agates, and carneliams. This 
 limestone is especially remarkable for its pinnacles and towers. Let it be 
 called the tower limestone. 
 
 These are the elements with which the walls are constructed, from black 
 buttress below to alabaster tower above. All of these elements weather in 
 different forms and are painted in different colors, so that the wall presents a 
 highly complex facade. A wall of homogeneous granite, like that in the 
 Yosemite, is but a naked wall, whether it be 1,000 or 5,000 feet high. Hun- 
 dreds and thousands of feet mean nothing to the eye when they stand in a 
 meaningless front. A mountain covered by pure snow 10,000 feet high has 
 but little more effect on the imagination than a mountain of snow 1,000 feet 
 high — it is but more of the same thing — but a facade of seven systems of 
 rock has its sublimity multiplied sevenfold. 
 
 -V 
 
 A Panoramic View of the Canyon. 
 
Consider next the horizontal elements of the Grand Canyon. The river 
 meanders in great curves, which are themselves broken into curves of smaller 
 magnitude. The streams that head far back in the plateau on either side 
 comedown in gorges and break the wall into sections. Each lateral canyon 
 has a secondary system of laterals, and the secondary canyons are broken by 
 tertiary canyons ; so the crags are forever branching, like the limbs of an oak. 
 That which has been described as a wall is such only in its grand effect. In 
 detail it is a series of structures separated by a ramification of canyons, each 
 having its own walls. Thus, in passing down the canyon it seems to be 
 inclosed by walls, but oftener by salients — towering structures that stand 
 between canyons that run back into the plateau. Sometimes gorges of the 
 second or third order have met before reaching the brink of the Grand Canyon, 
 and then great salients are cut off from the wall and stand out as buttes — 
 huge pavilions in the architecture of the canyon. The scenic elements thus 
 described are fused and combined in very different ways. 
 
 Its Length 
 
 We measured the length of the Grand Canyon by the length of the river 
 running through it, but the running extent of wall can not be measured in this 
 manner. In the black gneiss, which is at the bottom, the wall may stand above 
 the river for a few hundred yards or a mile or two ; then to follow the foot of 
 the wall you must pass into a lateral canyon for a long distance, perhaps miles, 
 and then back again on the other side of the lateral canyon; then along by 
 the river until another lateral canyon is reached, which must be headed in the 
 black gneiss. So for a dozen miles of river through the gneiss there may be a 
 hundred miles of wall on either side. Climbing to the summit of the black 
 gneiss and following the wall in the variegated quartzite, it is found to be 
 stretched out to a still greater length, for it is cut with more lateral gorges. 
 In like manner there is yet greater length of the mottled (or alcove) sandstone 
 wall, and the red wall is still farther stretched out in ever-branching gorges. 
 
 To make the distance for ten miles along the river by walking along the 
 top of the red wall it would be necessary to travel several hundred miles. _ The 
 length of the wall reaches its maximum in the banded sandstone, which is ter- 
 raced more than any of the other formations. The tower limestone wall is 
 less tortuous. To start at the head of the Grand Canyon on one of the terraces 
 of the banded sandstone and follow it to the foot of the Grand Canyon, which 
 by river is a distance of 217 miles, it would be necessary to travel many thou- 
 sand miles by the winding way ; that is, the banded wall is many thousand 
 miles in length. 
 
 Jis Seen Traveling DoWn Stream 
 
 For eight or ten miles below the mouth of the Little Colorado, the river is 
 in the variegated quartzites, and a wonderful fretwork of forms and colors, 
 peculiar to this rock, stretches back for miles to a labyrinth of the red-wall 
 cliff; then below, the black gneiss is entered and soon has reached an altitude 
 of Soo feet and sometimes more than 1,000 feet, and upon this black gneiss all 
 the other structures in their wonderful colors arc lifted. These continue for 
 about seventy miles, when the black gneiss below is lost, for the walls are 
 dropped down by the West Kaibab Fault and the river flows in the quartzites. 
 
 Then for eighty miles the mottled (or alcove) sandstones are found in the 
 river bed. The course of the canyon is a little south of west and is compara- 
 tively straight. At the top of the' red- wall limestone there is a broad terrace, 
 
two or three miles in width, composed of hills of wonderful forms carved in the 
 banded beds, and back of this is seen a cliff in the tower limestone. Along the 
 lower course of this stretch the whole character of the canyon is changed by 
 another set of complicating conditions. We have now reached a region of 
 volcanic activity. After the canyons were cut nearly to their present depth, 
 lavas poured out and volcanoes were built on the walls of the canyon, but not 
 in the canyon itself, though at places rivers of molten rock rolled down the 
 walls into the Colorado. 
 
 The canyon for the next eighty miles is a compound of that found where 
 the river is in the black gneiss and that found where the dead volcanoes stand 
 on the brink of the Avail. In the first stretch, where the gneiss is at the founda- 
 tion, we have a great bend to the south, and in the last stretch, where the gneiss 
 is below and the dead volcanoes above, another great southern detour is found. 
 These two great beds are separated by eighty miles of comparatively straight 
 river. 
 
 Let us call this first great bend the Kaibab reach of the canyon, and the 
 straight part the Kanab reach, for the Kanab Creek heads far off in the plateau 
 to the north and joins the Colorado at the beginning of the middle stretch. 
 The third great southern bend is the Shiwits stretch. Thus there are three 
 distinct portions of the Grand Canyon : The Kaibab section, characterized 
 more by its buttes and salients ; the Kanab section, characterized by its 
 comparatively straight walls with volcanoes on the brink, and the Shiwits 
 section, which is broken into great terraces with gneiss at the bottom and 
 volcanoes at the top. 
 
 The Wor% of Erosion 
 
 The erosion represented in the canyons, although vast, is but a small part 
 of the great erosion of the region, for between the cliffs blocks have been 
 carried away far superior in magnitude to those necessary to fill the canyons. 
 Probably there is no portion of the whole region from which there have not 
 been more than a thousand feet degraded, and there are districts from which 
 more than 30,000 feet of rock have been carried away; altogether there is a 
 district of country more than 200,000 square miles in extent, from which, on the 
 average, more than 6,000 feet have been eroded. Consider a rock 200,000 square 
 miles in extent and a mile in thickness, against which the clouds have hurled 
 their storms, and beat it into sands, and the rills have carried the sands into the 
 creeks, and the creeks have carried them into the rivers, and the Colorado has 
 carried them into the sea. 
 
 We think of the mountains as forming clouds about their brows, but the 
 clouds have formed the mountains. Great continental blocks are upheaved 
 from beneath the sea by internal geologic forces that fashion the earth. Then 
 the wandering clouds, the tempest-bearing clouds, the rainbow-decked clouds, 
 with mighty power and with wonderful skill, carve out valleys and canyons 
 and fashion hills and cliffs and mountains. The clouds are the artists sublime. 
 
 Winter and Cloud Effects 
 
 In winter some of the characteristics of the Grand Canyon are emphasized. 
 The black gneiss below, the variegated quartzite, and the green or alcove 
 sandstone form the foundation for the mighty red wall. The banded sandstone 
 entablature is crowned by the tower limestone. In winter this is covered with 
 snow. Seen from below, these changing elements seem to graduate into the 
 heavens, and no plane of demarcation between wall and blue firmament can be 
 seen. The heavens constitute a portion of the facade and mount into a vast 
 
dome from wall to wall, spanning- the Grand Canyon with empyrean blue So 
 the earth and the heavens are blended in one vast structure 
 
 When the clouds play in the canyon, as they often do in the rainy season 
 another set of effects is produced. Clouds creep out of canyons and wind into' 
 other canyons. The heavens seem to be alive, not moving as move the heavens 
 over a plain, m one direction with the wind, but following the multiplied 
 courses of these gorges. In this manner the little clouds seem to be individu 
 ahzed, to have wills and souls of their own and to be going on diverse errands — 
 a vast assemblage of self-willed clouds faring here and there intent upon 
 purposes hidden m their own breasts. In imagination the clouds belong to the 
 sky, and when they are m the canyon the skies come down into the gorges and 
 cling to the cliffs and lift them up to immeasurable heights for the skv must 
 still be far away. Thus they lend infinity to the walls. 
 
 You can not see the Grand Canyon in one view as if it were a changeless 
 spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it you have to toil 
 from month to month through its labyrinths. It is a region more difficult to 
 traverse than the Alps or the Himalayas, but if strength and courage are sufficient 
 for the task, by a year's toil a concept of sublimity can be obtained never ao-ain 
 to be equaled on the hither side of paradise • S 
 
 LofC. 
 
 On Grand View Point. 
 
 Copyright, 1899, by II. G. Peabody. 
 
THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD 
 
 'BY CHARLES F. LUMMIS 
 
 "The greatest thing in the world." That is a large phrase and an over- 
 worked one, and hardened travelers do not take it lightly upon the tongue. 
 Noticeably it is most glibly in use with those but lately, and for the first time, 
 wandered beyond their native state or county, and as every province has its 
 own local brag of biggest things, the too credulous tourist will find a superla- 
 tive everywhere. And superlatives are unsafe without wide horizons of com- 
 parison. 
 
 Yet in every sort there is, of course, somewhere " the biggest thing in the 
 world" of its kind. It is a good word, when spoken in season and not abused 
 in careless ignorance. 
 
 I believe there is and can be no dispute that the term applies literally to 
 several things in the immediate region of the Grand Canyon of Arizona. As I 
 have more than once written (and it never yet has been controverted), probably 
 no other equal area on earth contains so many supreme marvels of so many 
 kinds — so many astounding sights, so many masterpieces of Nature's handi- 
 work, so vast and conclusive an encyclopedia of the world-building processes, 
 so impressive monuments of prehistoric man, so many triumphs of man still 
 in the tribal relation — as what I have called the Southwestern Wonderland. 
 This includes a large part of New Mexico and Arizona, the area which geo- 
 graphically and ethnographically we may count as the Grand Canyon region. 
 Let me mention a few wonders : 
 
 The largest and by far the mos* beautiful of all petrified forests, with 
 several hundred square miles whose surface is carpeted with agate chips and 
 dotted with agate trunks two to four feet in diameter; and just across one 
 valley a buried "forest" whose huge silicified — not agatized — logs show their 
 ends under fifty feet of sandstone. 
 
 The largest natural bridge in the world — 200 feet high, over 500 feet span, 
 and over 600 feet wide, up and down stream, and with an orchard on its top 
 and miles of stalactite caves under its abutments. 
 
 The largest variety and display of geologically recent volcanic action in 
 North America; with 60-mile lava flows, 1,500-foot blankets of creamy tufa 
 
 23 
 
cut by scores of canyons ; hundreds of craters and thousands of square miles 
 of lava beds, basalt, and cinders, and so much "volcanic glass" (obsidian) that 
 it was the chief tool of the prehistoric population. 
 
 The largest and the most impressive villages of cave-dwellings in the 
 world, most of them already abandoned "when the world-seeking Genoese" 
 sailed. 
 
 The peerless and many-storied cliff -dwellings — castles and forts and homes 
 in the face of wild precipices or upon their tops — an aboriginal architecture 
 as remarkable as any in any land. 
 
 The twenty-six strange communal town republics of the descendants of 
 the "cliff-dwellers," the modern Pueblos; some in fertile valleys, some (like 
 Acoma and Moki) perched on barren and dizzy cliff tops. The strange dances, 
 rites, dress, and customs of this ancient people who had solved the problem of 
 irrigation, 6-story house building, and clean self-government, and even women's 
 rights — long before Columbus was born. 
 
 The noblest Caucasian ruins in America, north of Mexico — the great 
 stone and adobe churches reared by Franciscan missionaries, near three cen- 
 turies ago, a thousand miles from the ocean, in the heart of the vSouthwest. 
 
 Some of the most notable tribes of savage nomads — like the Navajos, whose 
 blankets and silver work are pre-eminent, and the Apaches, who, man for man, 
 have been probably the most successful warriors in history. 
 
 All these, and a great deal more, make the Southwest a wonderland without 
 a parallel. There are ruins as striking as the storied ones along the Rhine, and 
 far more remarkable. There are peoples as picturesque as any in the Orient, and 
 as romantic as the Aztecs and the Incas of whom we have learned such gilded 
 fables, and there are natural wonders which have no peers whatever. 
 
 Of the Canyon, and Other Wonders 
 
 At the head of the list stands the Grand Canyon of the Colorado ; whether 
 it is the "greatest wonder of the world" depends a little on our definition of 
 " wonder." Possibly it is no more wonderful than the fact that so tiny a fraction 
 of the people who confess themselves the smartest in the world have ever seen 
 it. As a people we dodder abroad to see scenery incomparably inferior. 
 
 But beyond peradventure it is the greatest chasm in the world, and the 
 most superb. Enough globe-trotters have seen it to establish that fact. Many 
 have come cynically prepared to be disappointed ; to find it overdrawn and 
 really not so stupendous as something else. It is, after all, a hard test that so 
 be-bragged a wonder must endure under the critical scrutiny of them that have 
 seen the earth and the fullness thereof. But I never knew the most self-satisfied 
 veteran traveler to be disappointed in the Grand Canyon, or to patronize it. On 
 the contrary, this is the very class of men who can best comprehend it, and I 
 have seen them fairly break down in its awful presence. 
 
 I do not know the Himalayas except by photograph and the testimony of 
 men who have explored and climbed them, and who found the Grand Canyon 
 an a1 >s< >lutely new experience. But I know the American continents pretty well, 
 and have tramped their mountains, including the Andes — the next highest 
 mountains in the world, after half a dozen of the Himalayas — and of all the 
 famous quebradas of the Andes there is not one that would' count 5 per cent on 
 the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. For all their 25,000-foot peaks, their blue- 
 white glaciers, imminent above the bald plateau, and green little bolsones 
 {" pocket valleys ") of Chile, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador; for all their tremendous 
 active volcanoes, like Saugay and Cotopaxi; for all an earthquake activity 
 
 24 
 
beside which the " shake " at Charleston was mere paper-doll play ; for all the 
 steepest gradients in the world (and Peru is the only place in the world where 
 a river falls 17,000 feet in 100 miles) — in all that marvelous 3,000-mile procession 
 of giantism there is not one canyon which any sane person would for an instant 
 compare with that titanic gash that the Colorado has chiseled through a compar- 
 atively flat upland. Nor is there anything remotely approaching it in all the 
 New World. So much I can say at first hand. As for the Old World, the 
 explorer who shall find a gorge there one-half as great will win undying fame. 
 
 The quebrada of the Apu-Rimac is a marvel of the Andes, with its vertigi- 
 nous depths and its suspension bridge of wild vines. The Grand Canyon of the 
 Arkansas, in Colorado, is a noble little slit in the mountains. The Franconia 
 and White Mountain notches in New Hampshire are beautiful. The Yosemite 
 and the Yellowstone canyons surpass the world, each in its way. But if all 
 of these were hung up on the opposite wall of the Grand Canyon from you the 
 chances are fifty to one that you could not tell t'other from which, nor any 
 of them from the hundreds of other canyons which rib that vast vertebrate 
 gorge. If the falls of Niagara were installed in the Grand Canyon between 
 your visits and you knew it by the newspapers — next time you stood on that 
 dizzy rimrock you would probably need good field-glasses and much patience 
 before you could locate that cataract which in its place looks pretty big. If 
 Mount Washington were plucked up bodily by the roots — not from where you 
 see it, but from sea-level — and carefully set down in the Grand Canyon, you 
 probably would not notice it next morning, unless its dull colors distinguished 
 it in that innumerable congress of larger and painted giants. 
 
 All this, which is literally true, is a mere trifle of what might be said in 
 trying to fix a standard of comparison for the Grand Canyon. But I fancy 
 there is no standard adjustable to the human mind. You may compare all 
 you will — eloquently and from wide experience, and at last all similes fail. 
 The Grand Canyon is just the Grand Canyon, and that is all you can say. I 
 never have seen anyone who was prepared for it. I never have seen anyone 
 who could grasp it in a week's hard exploration; nor anyone, except some rare 
 Philistine, who could even think he had grasped it. I have seen people rave 
 over it; better people struck dumb with it, even strong men who cried over it; 
 but I have never yet seen the man or woman that expected it. 
 
 It adds seriously to the scientific wonder and the universal impressiveness 
 of this unparalleled chasm that it is not in some stupendous mountain range, 1 >ut 
 in a vast, arid, lofty floor of nearly 100,000 square miles — as it were, a crack in 
 the upper story of the continent. There is no preparation for it. Unless you 
 had been told, you would no more dream that out yonder amid the pines the 
 flat earth is slashed to its very bowels, than you would expect to find an iceberg 
 in Broadway. With a very ordinary running jump from the spot where you 
 get your first glimpse of the canyon you could go down 2,000 feet without 
 touching. It is sudden as a well. 
 
 But it is no mere cleft. It is a terrific trough 6,000 to 7,000 feet deep, ten 
 to twenty miles wide, hundreds of miles long, peopled with hundreds of peaks 
 taller than any mountain east of the Rockies, yet not one of them with its 
 head so high as your feet, and all ablaze with such color as no eastern or 
 European landscape ever knew, even in the Alpen-glow. And as you sit upon 
 the brink the divine scene-shifters give you a new canyon every hour. With 
 each degree of the sun's course the great countersunk mountains we have 
 been watching fade away, and new ones, as terrific, are carved by the wester- 
 ing shadows. It is like a dissection of the whole cosmogony. And the purple 
 shadows, the dazzling lights, the thunderstorms and snowstorms, the clouds and 
 the rainbows that shift and drift in that vast subterranean arena below your 
 
feet ! And amid those enchanted towers and castles which the vastness of the 
 scale leads you to call "rocks," but which are in fact as big above the river-bed 
 as the Rockies from Denver, and bigger than Mount Washington from Fabyan's 
 or the Glen ! 
 
 The Grand Canyon country is not only the hugest, but the most varied 
 and instructive example on earth of one of the chief factors of earth-build- 
 ing — erosion. It is the mesa country — the Land of Tables. Nowhere else on 
 the footstool is there such an example of deep-gnawing water or of water 
 high-carving. The sandstone mesas of the Southwest, the terracing of canyon 
 walls, the castellation, battlementing, and cliff -making, the cutting clown of a 
 whole landscape except its precipitous islands of flat-topped rock, the thin lava 
 table-cloths on tables ioo feet high — -these are a few of the things which make 
 the Southwest wonderful alike to the scientist and the mere sight-seer. 
 
 That the canyon is not "too hard " is perhaps sufficiently indicated by the 
 fact that I have taken thither ladies and children and men in their seventies, 
 when the easiest way to get there was by a 70-mile stage ride, and that at 
 six years old my little girl walked all the way from rim to bottom of canyon 
 andcame back on a horse the same day, and was next morning ready to go on 
 a long tramp along the rim. 
 
 1 g * '.*-m%wr 
 
 3 
 
 ■:: 
 J* 
 
 "^ 
 
 I opyright, W99,by II. G. Peabody. 
 
 The North Wall from Grand Scenic Divide. 
 26 
 
INFORMATION FOR TOURISTS 
 
 'Preliminary 
 
 ne way by which to directly reach the Grand Canyon i 
 via the Santa Fe (The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Ra: 
 
 There is onl) 
 Arizona, and that 
 way System). 
 
 There are three ways of reaching the Canyon from the Santa Fe — r, 
 from "Williams, private conveyance from Flagstaff and Peach Springs. 
 
 The route from Flagstaff is not available in winter. The Peach Sprin 
 route is open in winter, but now little used. The bulk of the travel is \ 
 Williams, sixty-five miles north to Bright Angel — open all the year. 
 
 ni 
 
 Three Gateways 
 
 There are but three points from which an easy descent may be made of 
 the south wall to the granite gorge of the Grand Canyon : 
 
 i. At Grand View, clown Berry's (Grand View) or Hance's (Red Canyon) 
 trails. 
 
 2. At Bright Angel, down Bright Angel Trail. 
 
 3. At Bass' Camp, down Mystic Spring Trail. 
 
 While the canyon may be reached over trails at other places outside of 
 the district named "(such as Lee's Ferry Trail, by wagon from Winslow ; Moki 
 Indian Trail, by way of Little Colorado Can von ; and Diamond Creek road to 
 Colorado River from Peach Springs station), most tourists prefer the Bright 
 Angel, Grand View, and Bass' Camp routes, because of the superior facilities 
 and views there offered. The Peach Springs route is the only other one now 
 used by the public to any extent. 
 
 It is near Grand View that Marble Canyon ends and the Grand Canyon 
 proper begins. Northward, a few miles away, is the mouth of the Little Colo- 
 rado Canyon. Here the granite gorge is first seen. 
 
 Bright Angel is approximately in the center, and Bass' Camp at the 
 western end of the granite gorge. By wagon road it is eighteen miles from 
 Bright Angel east to Grand View, and twenty-three miles west to Bass' Camp. 
 
In a nutshell, the Grand Canyon at Grand View is accounted most sublime 
 — a scene of wide outlooks and brilliant hues ; at Bright Angel, deepest and 
 most impressive — a scene that awakens the profoundest emotions; at Bass' 
 Camp, the most varied — a scene of striking contrasts in form and color. 
 
 Each locality has its special charm. All three should be visited, if time 
 permits, as only by long observation can one gain even a superficial knowledge 
 of what the Grand Canyon is. To know it intimately requires a longer stay 
 and more careful study. 
 
 The Ride from Williams 
 
 Because of recent improvements in service the Grand Canyon of Arizona 
 may now be visited, either in summer or winter, with reasonable comfort and 
 without any hardship. No one need be deterred by fear of inclement weather 
 or a tedious stage ride. The trip is entirely feasible for the average traveler 
 every day in the year. 
 
 Leaving the vSanta Fe transcontinental train at Williams, Arizona, passen- 
 gers change in same depot to a local train of the Grand Canyon Railway, which 
 leaves Williams daily, and arrives at destination after a three hours' run. 
 
 Williams is a busy town of 1,500 inhabitants, 378 miles west of Albu- 
 querque, on the Santa Fe. Here are located large sawmills, smelters, numerous 
 well-stocked stores, and railroad division buildings. Prior to the disastrous fire 
 in July, 1901, there were several excellent hotels. The one not destroyed 
 affords good accommodations, and it will not be long before other facilities are 
 provided. 
 
 The railroad track to the canyon is remarkably smooth for a new line. It 
 is built across a slightly rolling mesa, in places thickly wooded, in others open. 
 The snow-covered San Francisco Peaks are on the eastern horizon. Kendricks, 
 Sitgreaves, and Williams mountains are also visible. Red Butte, thirty miles 
 distant, is a prominent local landmark. Before the terminus is reached the train 
 climbs a long, high ridge and enters Coconino Forest, which resembles a natural 
 park. The route here is amid fragrant pines, over low hills and along occasional 
 gulches and "washes." Taken under the favorable conditions which generally 
 prevail at this high altitude, the journey is a novelty and a delight. 
 
 At Destination 
 
 The hotel at head of Bright Angel Trail is reached late in the evening. 
 The tourist then finds himself on the verge of a high precipice, from which is 
 obtained by moonlight a magnificent view of the opposite wall and of the inter- 
 vening crags, towers, and slopes. The suddenness, the surprise, the revelation 
 come as a fitting climax to a unique trip. After nightfall the air becomes cold, 
 for here you are 7,000 feet above the sea; yet the absence of humidity, peculiar 
 to these high altitudes, makes the chill less penetrating than on lower levels. By 
 day, in the sunshine, there is usually a genial warmth — then overcoats, gloves, 
 and wraps are laid aside. 
 
 B right Angel Hotel . 
 
 The Bright Angel Hotel is managed by Mr. M. Buggeln, who also controls 
 the stage line, trail stock, guides, etc. The hotel comprises a combination log 
 and frame structure of eight rooms, with a neat frame annex of six rooms, and 
 (for summer use) several rows of tents, all clustered on the rim and surrounded 
 by pines and spruces. Each room in the annex has two beds, a stove, dressing 
 
= e ^ 
 
 SS^cy^^^eSdUi^b^ erected recently which contains 
 UvenS 'sleepfn- rooms and furnishes excellent accommodations or tourists 
 
 Good meals are prepared by an expert cook and served m a pleasant dimng- 
 room In a word L P t he hotel facilities are good, far better than one might 
 exnect to find for 'the reasonable rate charged. There is no -roughing it 
 
 1 ng ?s homelike and comfortable One must not however expect 
 all the city luxuries. A telephone line directly connects the hotel with the 
 outer world at Williams. 
 
 latest conveniences. 
 
 While one ouffht to remain at least a week, a stop-over of three days from 
 the ?antcoTtin°enfal trip will allow practically ^two days at the can^n . O e 
 full day should be devoted to an excursion down Blight Ange 1 liai ^ ?£a tne 
 
 ^mikta" a fom days' stop-over in all-will enable visitors to get more satis- 
 
 factory views of this stupendous wonder. 
 
 Down Bright Angel Trail 
 
 The trail here is perfectly safe and is generally open the year round. In 
 midwinter i t is liable to be closed for a few days at the top by snow but sue 
 Wockade is onlv temporary. It reaches from the hotel four miles to the top 
 o f the ^granite waU immediately overlooking the Colorado River. At this point 
 the river is i ^oo feet below, while the hotel on the rim is 4,300 feet above. 
 The trip 1 commonly made on horseback, accompanied by a guide ; charges 
 for tra stock and services of guide are moderate. A strong person accus- 
 omecrto mountain climbing, cair make the round trip on foot m one day by 
 starting early enough; but the average traveler will soon discovei that a horse 
 is a necessity especially for the upward climb. 
 
 Eigtt hours are required for going down and commg ^^ r ^^° 
 hours for lunch, rest, and sight-seeing. Those wishing to reach the in ei leave 
 the mam trail at Indian Garden Spring and follow the c — 1 co urse.of 
 Willow Creek Owing to the abrupt descent from this point, part ot the side 
 teail must be traversed on foot. Provision is made for those wishing to camp 
 out at night on the river's edge. Aii , 
 
 The famous guide, John Hance, is now located at Bright Angel. 
 
 What to Bring 
 
 If much tramping is done, stout, thick shoes should be provided. Ladies 
 will find that short walking skirts are a convenience ; divided skns a e pref- 
 erable but not essential, for the horseback journey down the zigzag trail 
 Traveling caps and (in summer) broad-brimmed straw hats ar e useful toi let 
 adjuncts 8 Otherwise ordinary clothing will suffice. A f^ eld /^™f^ 
 nally assists in getting a satisfactory view of the farthest &** A ™f*^ 8 
 ordinary size should be brought along, although it can only record little details 
 of the canyon-one should not expect to photograph the entire panorama. 
 
 29 
 
Bright Angel Hotel. 
 
 The round-trip ticket rate, Williams to Grand Canyon and return, is only 
 $6.50. Adding $6 for two days' stay at Canyon Hotel, $1 for part of a day 
 at hotel in Williams, $1.50 for probable proportion of cost of guide, $3 for trail 
 stock, and the total necessary expense of the three days' stop-over is about $18 
 for one person ; each additional day only adds $3 to the cost for hotel. 
 
 Stop-overs will be granted at Williams on railroad and Pullman tickets if 
 advance application is made to train and Pullman conductors. Trunks may 
 be stored in the station at Williams free of charge by arrangement with ticket 
 agent. 
 
 Grand View 
 
 Grand View (previously mentioned) may be reached in summer by private 
 conveyance from Flagstaff, a distance of seventy-five miles ; or at any time of 
 the year by stage from Bright Angel, sixteen miles along the rim. The rate 
 for round trip, Bright Angel to Grand View, is $2.50 to $5 each person, 
 according to size of party. While Flagstaff is an interesting place to visit — 
 with its near-by cliff and cave dwellings and San Francisco Peaks — and the 
 trip thence to the Grand Canyon is a novel one, distance and time are such 
 that most travelers prefer to go in by railroad from Williams. 
 
 Grand View Hotel is a large, rustic structure, built near the head of 
 Berry's Trail and about three miles from Hance's Trail, in the midst of tall 
 pines and overlooking the mighty bend of the Colorado. This is the point to 
 which visitors were conducted in the days of the old stage line from Flagstaff. 
 
 It is noted for its wide views of the Coconino Forest and Painted Desert, as 
 well as for the beautiful forms and color of the canyon itself. A favorite trip 
 here is to go down one trail and up the other. The hotel accommodations are 
 quite good ; capacity, forty guests; rate, $3 per day. 
 
 30 
 
Bass' Camp 
 
 At the western end of the granite gorge is Mystic Spring Trail, an easy 
 route down to the Colorado River and up the other side to Button's Point and 
 Powell's Plateau.. The magnificent panorama eastward from Havasupai Point 
 takes in fifty miles of the canyon, while westward is the unique, table-like 
 formation which characterizes the lower reaches of the river. 
 
 Present accommodations at Bass' Camp, near head of this trail, are rather 
 meager, consisting of a small cabin and a few tents; meals are served in 
 camping-out style. The views here, from both rims, are pronounced by noted 
 artists and explorers to be uneqnaled. 
 
 Bass' Camp is now reached by team from Bright Angel, twenty-six miles. 
 Advance arrangements must be made for transportation. 
 
 The facilities at Bass' Camp will be greatly improved during 1902 and 
 daily stage put on from Coconino Station, on Grand Canyon Railway. 
 
 Peach Springs 'R.oute 
 
 The trip in winter from Peach Springs station down to the Colorado River, 
 through Diamond Creek Canyon, is most enjoyable. ( hving to the low altitude 
 here (4,7So feet at Peach Springs and approximately 2,000 feet at the river) 
 the air is usually balmy from November to April; in summer the heat is a 
 considerable drawback. 
 
 A journey of but twelve miles leads you through a miniature Grand 
 Canyon with scenery increasingly sublime. On either side are abrupt walls 
 and wonderfully suggestive formations — castles, domes, minarets. On your 
 left, glancing backward, is an exact reproduction of Westminster Abbey. 
 
 This comparatively easy jaunt brings you by team to the very brink of 
 the swift-rolling Colorado, whereas by the other Grand Canyon gateways you 
 are landed on the rim and must go down thousands of feet by a steep trail. 
 The outlook here is restricted to the river itself and the great walls rising pre- 
 cipitously from its banks — a scene well worth while, but not so impressive as 
 the wide sweep of the canyon visible from the rim. 
 
 Following Diamond Creek to its source you may walk along the bed of the 
 stream between walls thousands of feet high and glistening in the white sun- 
 light as if varnished. The upper part of Diamond Creek is a veritable terrace 
 of fern bowers, luxuriant vegetation, crystal cascades, and sequestered meadow 
 parks. 
 
 Flagstaff and Vicinity 
 
 The town itself is an interesting place, prettily situated in the heart of the 
 San Francisco uplift and surrounded by a pine forest. 
 
 Its hotels, business houses, lumber mills, and residences denote thrift. On 
 a neighboring hill is the Lowell Observatory, noted for its many contributions 
 to astronomical science. 
 
 Eight miles southwest from Flagstaff — reached by a pleasant drive along 
 a level road through tall pines — is Walnut Canyon, a rent in the earth several 
 hundred feet deep and three miles long, with steep terraced walls of limestone. 
 Along the shelving terraces, under beetling projections of the strata, are scores 
 of quaint cliff dwellings, the most famous group of its kind in this region. 
 The larger abodes are divided into several compartments by cemented walls, 
 many parts of which are still intact. It is believed that these cliff dwellers 
 
were of the same stock as the Pueblo Indians of to-day and that they lived here 
 about 800 years ago. 
 
 Nine miles from Flagstaff and only half a mile from the old stage road to 
 the Grand Canyon, upon the summit of an extinct crater, the remarkable 
 ruins of the cave-dwellers may be seen. 
 
 The magnificent San Francisco Peaks, visible from every part of the 
 country within a radius of a hundred miles, lie just north of Flagstaff. There 
 are three peaks which form one mountain. From Flagstaff a road has been 
 constructed up Humphrey's Peak, whose summit is 12,750 feet above sea level. 
 It is a good mountain road, and the entire distance from Flagstaff is only about 
 ten miles. The trip to the summit and back is easily made in one day. 
 
 The summit of Humphrey's Peak affords a noble view, the panorama 
 including the north wall of the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, the Moki 
 villages, the Superstition Mountains near Phoenix, many lakes, and far glimpses 
 over a wide circle. 
 
 yinnouncement. 
 
 The Santa Fe has just published a new and beautiful book on the Grand 
 Canyon. It contains articles by Hamlin Garland, Harriet Monroe, Robert 
 Brewster Stanton, Chas. S. Gleed, John L. Stoddard, Charles Dudley Warner, 
 R. D. Salisbury, " Fitz Mac," Nat M. Brigham, Joaquin Miller, Edwin Burritt 
 Smith, David Starr Jordan,' C. E. Beecher, Henry P. Ewing, and Thomas 
 Moran, as well as the authors represented in this pamphlet. The book has 
 more than a hundred pages, illustrated with half-tones and portraits; the 
 cover is from a painting of the Canyon by Thomas Moran, and is lithographed 
 in seven colors. 
 
 It will be forwarded on receipt of twenty-five cents. 
 
 Address' W.J. BLACK, 
 .mGcn'l Passenger Agent, A., T. & S. F. Ry., CHICAGO. 
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