onventions of an earlier generation which bound
conceptions of taste and beauty, as of art, dress, religion, and human
relations generally, in shackles which do not exist in these days of
individualism and broad horizons. To-day we see the Grand Canyon with
profound astonishment but without prejudice. Its amazing size, its
bewildering configuration, its unprecedented combinations of color
affect the freed and elated consciousness of our times as another and
perhaps an ultimate revelation in nature of law, order, and beauty.

In these pages I shall make no attempt to describe the Grand Canyon.
Nature has written her own description, graving it with a pen of water
in rocks which run the series of the eternal ages. Her story can be read
only in the original; translations are futile. Here I shall try only to
help a little in the reading.

II

The Grand Canyon was cut by one of the great rivers of the continent,
the Colorado, which enters Arizona from the north and swings sharply
west; thence it turns south to form most of Arizona's western boundary,
and a few miles over the Mexican border empties into the head of the
Gulf of California. It drains three hundred thousand square miles of
Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. It is formed in Utah by the
confluence of the Green and the Grand Rivers. Including the greater of
these, the Green River, it makes a stream fifteen hundred miles in
length which collects the waters of the divide south and east of the
Great Basin and of many ranges of the Rocky Mountain system. The Grand
River, for its contribution, collects the drainage of the Rockies'
mighty western slopes in Colorado.

The lower reaches of these great tributaries and practically all of the
Colorado River itself flow through more than five hundred miles of
canyons which they were obliged to dig through the slowly upheaving
sandstone plateaus in order to maintain their access to the sea.
Succeeding canyons bear names designating their scenic or geologic
character. Progressively southward they score deeper into the strata of
the earth's crust until, as they approach their climax, they break
through the bottom of the Paleozoic limestone deep into the heart of the
Archean gneiss. This limestone trench is known as the Marble Canyon, the
Archean trench as the Granite Gorge. The lower part of the Marble Canyon
and all the Granite Gorge, together with their broad, vividly colored
and fantastically carved upper canyon ten m