of green, and
here and there a scrub-cedar. Half a mile down, the slope merged into
green level. But close, keen gaze made out this level to be a rolling
plain, growing darker green, with blue lines of ravines, and thin,
undefined spaces that might be mirage. Miles and miles it swept and
relied and heaved to lose its waves in apparent darker level. A round,
red rock stood isolated, marking the end of the barren plain, and
farther on were other round rocks, all isolated, all of different shape.
They resembled huge grazing cattle. But as Shefford gazed, and his sight
gained strength from steadily holding it to separate features these
rocks were strangely magnified. They grew and grew into mounds, castles,
domes, crags--great, red, wind-carved buttes. One by one they drew his
gaze to the wall of upflung rock. He seemed to see a thousand domes of a
thousand shapes and colors, and among them a thousand blue clefts, each
one a little mark in his sight, yet which he knew was a canyon. So far
he gained some idea of what he saw. But beyond this wide area of curved
lines rose another wall, dwarfing the lower, dark red, horizon--long,
magnificent in frowning boldness, and because of its limitless deceiving
surfaces, breaks, and lines, incomprehensible to the sight of man. Away
to the eastward began a winding, ragged, blue line, looping back upon
itself, and then winding away again, growing wider and bluer. This
line was the San Juan Canyon. Where was Joe Lake at that moment? Had he
embarked yet on the river--did that blue line, so faint, so deceiving,
hold him and the boat? Almost it was impossible to believe. Shefford
followed the blue line all its length, a hundred miles, he fancied, down
toward the west where it joined a dark, purple, shadowy cleft. And this
was the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. Shefford's eye swept along with
that winding mark, farther and farther to the west, round to the left,
until the cleft, growing larger and coming closer, losing its deception,
was seen to be a wild and winding canyon. Still farther to the left, as
he swung in fascinated gaze, it split the wonderful wall--a vast plateau
now with great red peaks and yellow mesas. The canyon was full of purple
smoke. It turned, it gaped, it lost itself and showed again in that
chaos of a million cliffs. And then farther on it became again a cleft,
a purple line, at last to fail entirely in deceiving distance.

Shefford imagined there was no scene in all th