l the water that falls upon them. Drift is
lodged in the crevices thirty feet overhead."

Descending to this ledge the tourist "can hardly 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 the Colorado River, but won his way. And after
viewing a fraction of the scene at close range, one cannot hold it to
the discredit of three of Major Powell's 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 privation, 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....

"Not the most fervid pictures of a poet's fancy could transcend the
glories 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."

The language is not yet invented that can suggest any adequate idea of
the Grand Canyon. Nor can it be painted or photographed, or in any way
pictorially reproduced in a manner to afford any suggestion, even, of
its sublimity in design and its perpetual enchantment of color. One
beholds the temples and towers and mosques and pagodas glowing in
rose-red, sapphire blue, with emerald and amber and amethyst, all
blending, and swimming, apparently, in a sea of purple, or of pearl gray
mist, the colors flashing through like flame under alabaster. The
sunlight changes as the day wears on, and so this play of color
changes,--glowing, fading, paling, flaming. Watching these magical
effects from dawn to sunset, watching the panorama of color as it
deepens into mysterious shadows and spectral illusions under the
moonlight, one can only say, "What hath God wrought!" To contemplate