ains running to the edge of
the Grand Canon of Arizona, I was troubled with thoughts of the
disenchantment likely to follow. But last winter, when I saw those
trains crawling along through the pines of the Cocanini Forest and
close up to the brink of the chasm at Bright Angel, I was glad to
discover that in the presence of such stupendous scenery they are
nothing. The locomotives and trains are mere beetles and caterpillars,
and the noise they make is as little disturbing as the hooting of an
owl in the lonely woods.

In a dry, hot, monotonous forested plateau, seemingly boundless, you
come suddenly and without warning upon the abrupt edge of a gigantic
sunken landscape of the wildest, most multitudinous features, and
those features, sharp and angular, are made out of flat beds of
limestone and sandstone forming a spiry, jagged, gloriously colored
mountain-range countersunk in a level gray plain. It is a hard job
to sketch it even in scrawniest outline; and try as I may, not in
the least sparing myself, I cannot tell the hundredth part of the
wonders of its features--the side-canons, gorges, alcoves, cloisters,
and amphitheaters of vast sweep and depth, carved in its magnificent
walls; the throng of great architectural rocks it contains resembling
castles, cathedrals, temples, and palaces, towered and spired and
painted, some of them nearly a mile high, yet beneath one's feet.
All this, however, is less difficult than to give any idea of the
impression of wild, primeval beauty and power one receives in merely
gazing from its brink. The view down the gulf of color and over the
rim of its wonderful wall, more than any other view I know, leads us
to think of our earth as a star with stars swimming in light, every
radiant spire pointing the way to the heavens.

But it is impossible to conceive what the canon is, or what impression
it makes, from descriptions or pictures, however good. Naturally it is
untellable even to those who have seen something perhaps a little like
it on a small scale in this same plateau region. One's most extravagant
expectations are indefinitely surpassed, though one expect much from what
is said of it as "the biggest chasm on earth"--"so big is it that all
other big things,--Yosemite, the Yellowstone, the Pyramids, Chicago,--all
would be lost if tumbled into it." Naturally enough, illustrations as to
size are sought for among other canons like or unlike it, with the common
result of worse confoun